
KAROW COLLECTION 

Not to be taken from Library 




JOSEPH NCOONOUGF 



WILLIAMS'S EVENTS IN FRANCE. 



A NARRATIVE 



OF 



THE EVENTS WHICH HAVE TAKEN 
PLACE IN FRANCE 



FROM THE 



itanliing of jBtapoleon Bonaparte 

On the First of March, 1815, till the 
Restoration of Louis XVIII. 



TOitlj an Account of t^z State of Societg anti l^nWt 
©pmton at tl)at JperiotJ. 

BY 

HELEN MARIA WILLIAMS. 




CLEVELAND: t\)t WxXttOm y5tOt\)tt& 

Company, publishers — m dccc xcv. 



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Gift 
Mrs. Anna B©lle Karow 

^zijm f^untircli una jptftg Copies teprmtetj for tje BurroiMS 
33rflt!)er0 Compang ig Jofjn railson antJ ^on, at tfje 
SEntijetsitg Pusg, Cam^Jtitige, 1894- 



NAREATIYE 



OF 



EVENTS IN FRANCE. 



LETTEK I. 

My Deae Sie, ^^^''' ^P"'' ^^^^- 

If in the list of moral maxims anything had 
been left unsaid upon the evil of procrastination, 
this would be a fit occasion to add something to 
the stock of luminous observations made on that 
subject since the beginning of time. But why 
have you furnished me with a sad example of the 
truth of these precepts ? Why, when the Eng- 
lish hastened in multitudes to Paris, have you de- 
layed your journey from week to week, till it can 
no longer be accomplished ? 

Although divided from each other by a geogra- 
phical space of only a few short leagues, at what 
an immeasurable distance were the two countries 
which we inhabit separated by the ascendancy of 
that Implacable Will which had placed a barrier 
between the nations more insurmountable than 



L NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

the wall of China ! You will easily believe that I 
saw with pleasure the arrival once more of those 
groups of travellers who speak my native lan- 
guage, who remind me of the scenes of early life, 
who conjure up those images of the past which no 
heart recals without emotion, and which '' breathe 
a second spring." But amidst those successive 
crowds, why have I not seen the friend of my 
youth ? Why have your chariot-wheels tarried, 
till I can no longer urge you to come, although I 
believe you would incur no personal danger by so 
doing ? Our re-installed emperor is extremely mor- 
tified at the precipitation with which the English 
visitors fly from his dominion. It may indeed be 
observed, that in our paroxysms of political mad- 
ness in this country we have usually imagination 
enough to blend a little variety in our proceed- 
ings ; and therefore the English having been once 
detained, was probably the y^ry reason why they 
had no such measure again to apprehend, since 
its folly and impolicy had been amply recognized. 
The English might, therefore, have applied to 
themselves the observation made long since by 
M. de la Fayette to the people, when they wanted 
the oath of the first federation to be repeated : 
" Mes amis, le serment n'est pas une arriette, qu'on 
joue deux fois." 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 3 

Fear, however, is very subject to reason amiss; 
the English have departed, and you will naturally 
defer your visit till the end of the present dynasty, 
which to me excludes not the hope of seeing you, 
perhaps ere long, in Paris. In the mean time I 
shall trace, as you desire, in a series of letters, the 
events which are passing before me, and which 
you will one day give to the public, if you con- 
sider my sketches as worthy its attention. I have 
been often asked by my countrymen of late, why I 
have so long discontinued to describe the scenes 
which are passing around me ? I have perhaps 
done wrong, since I may at least pretend to be 
qualified for the task, inasmuch as it respects a 
knowledge of the subject, — I who, during my 
residence in Paris, have witnessed all the succes- 
sive phases of its revolutions, who have so long 
marked the list of its remembrances, its calamities, 
its triumphs, and its crimes ! 

But the iron hand of despotism has weighed 
upon my soul, and subdued all intellectual energy. 
The Chevalier de Boufflers used to call Bonaparte 
"le cochemare de Tunivers," the night-mare of 
the world ; and indeed the idea of the conse- 
quences with which those were menaced who ven- 
tured to collect forbidden materials for history, 
was sufficient to chill this sort of courage. We 



4 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

long believed the tyranny of Bonaparte to be con- 
firmed, while now, persuaded that his new usurpa- 
tion will not be durable, I shall no longer hang my 
harp upon the willows, and despair of the future. 

I shall begin wath the second volume of Napo- 
leon's history, or, to use the words of Madame de 
Stael, of Bonaparte's adventures, leaving the first 
volume to a future period, or an abler historian. 
It would indeed be quite impossible for me, in the 
present agitation of my mind, to " begin at the 
beginning." I partake the common feeling ex- 
perienced by all who have witnessed the French 
Revolution, that of an insuperable repugnance to 
returning on the past. When we reflect on all we 
have seen and suffered in this country, the soul 
recoils from such a host of fearful recollections, 
and we experience a moral sentiment which has 
perhaps some kind of analogy to the physical sen- 
sation described by Shakspeare, when he says, 

^' The very place puts toys of desperation, 
Without more motive, into every brain." 

Connected with this sentiment, those w^ho have 
witnessed the Revolution feel also a sort of weari- 
ness of the memory of what is past. If the suc- 
cession of time be measured by that of events, we 
have lived, not years, but ages of revolutionary 
life, and we are tired of the retrospect. In one 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 5 

word, I cannot prevail with myself to go back 
farther in my narration than the first of March, 
1815. 

Before I begin, however, let me say a few words 
of myself; which I shall do with all possible brev- 
ity, this being, when we talk of ourselves, the first 
merit with others. You write to me in something 
like Italics, as if to give force to reproof, " you 
tvere a Bonapartist." I shall answer this accusa- 
tion by pleading guilty. Yes, I admired Bona- 
parte ; I admired also the French revolution. To 
my then youthful imagination, the day-star of 
liberty seemed to rise on the vine-covered hills of 
France only to shed benedictions on humanity. I 
dreamt of prison-doors thrown open, — of dun- 
geons visited by the light of day, — of the peas- 
ant oppressed no longer, — of equal rights, equal 
laws, a golden age, in which all that lived were to 
be happy. But how soon did these beautiful illu- 
sions vanish, and this star of liberty set in blood ! 
How just was the reflection of Monsieur Gorani at 
the time of revolutionary horrors, " Je connaissais 
les grands, mais je ne connaissais pas les petits." 
You, however, are not of the number of those 
who deny that liberty was formed to bless and 
dignify mankind, because she has fallen on " evil 
days and evil tongues." 



6 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

When Bonaparte first appeared on the politi- 
cal horizon, I was not yet cured of enthusiasm. 
He presented himself to the world as fighting the 
battles of liberty — and by what splendid victories 
did he maintain her cause in Italy ! What mo- 
desty in his demeanour, when, at his return, he 
made his solemn entry into Paris, and was re- 
ceived at a public audience by the Directory ! As 
he passed through the crowded streets, he leaned 
back in his carriage, and seemed to shrink from 
those acclamations which were then the voluntary 
offering of the heart, and were such as he has 
since been unable, with all his power, to purchase. 
I saw him decline placing himself in the chair of 
state which had been prepared for him, and seem 
as if he wished to escape from the general bursts 
of applause. 

Allow me to observe also, e?^ passant, that I 
had been assured he was an enthusiastic admirer 
of Ossian; and when I found that he united to 
a noble simplicity of character, and a generous 
disdain of applause, a veneration for Ossian, this 
circumstance filled up the measure of my admira- 
tion. I did not then know that Bonaparte valued 
Ossian only for his descriptions of battles, like the 
surgeon who praised Homer only for his skill in 
anatomy. 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 7 

Even the events of the 18th Brumaire, al- 
though somewhat mysterious, were insufficient to 
shake my credulity. He had dissolved with vio- 
lence the national representation, but it was only 
to repress the Jacobins and prevent the return of 
terrorism. When he w^as named First Consul, 
I believed that liberty was about to flourish fair 
under his auspices, and that France was hence- 
forth to be great and happy. It seemed as if, in 
a better sense, it might be said of him that " the 
world was made for Csesar." All the circum- 
stances of the Revolution had combined to effect 
his elevation. The nation was wearied of the 
great experiment it had made in politics, and for 
w^hich it had paid so dear. The cruel abuses of 
liberty, the horrible outrages of the reign of terror 
were still present to every memory, and even the 
republicans themselves despaired of a republic. 
The nation, conscious, at the same time, of the 
wrongs it had inflicted on the race of its kings, in 
despair of impunity, added to its offences a new 
injustice, and believing that the Bourbons would 
never forget the past, wished to separate them 
forever from the future. 

In this situation of things, and in this disposi- 
tion of the public mind, Bonaparte took possession 
of the government. He had so noble and so mar- 



8 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

vellous a part to act, that it was difficult to be- 
lieve he would mar all by his performance. It 
might have been expected that he would have 
had the good taste, as well as morality, to avoid 
the beaten track of vulgar and ordinary ambition ; 
and that he would seek, by other paths, the prize 
of purer glory. He soon, however, corrected the 
defect of discernment in those who had thus au- 
gured of his genius and his virtue. The rapid 
successive gradations to the consulate for life, and 
thence to the imperial purple, dispelled all illu- 
sion, and displayed the undisguised truth. 

*' Thou hast it now, King, Cawdor, Glamis, all." 

Thus ends my confession : and, passing over the 
memorable interval of time since the coronation 
of Napoleon the Great, by Pope Pius the Seventh, 
in the metropolitan church of Notre Dame, let 
me lead you towards the little vessel on which 
Bonaparte lately anchored in the bay of Juan. 



LETTER II. 

April, 1815. 

A FEELING of surprize, but a very slight degree 
of inquietude, was excited at Paris by the intelli- 
gence that Bonaparte had landed, on the first of 
March, at the little town of Cannes, on the coast 
of Provence, attended by a few followers. His 
arrival was talked of, less as a subject of alarm, 
than of speculation with respect to the motives 
of his expedition. It was generally believed that 
his appearance in France would be very transient, 
and that he only meant to open to himself a 
passage through Piedmont into Italy, to join his 
brother-in-law, Joachim king of Naples. 

It seemed indeed singular that he should have 
landed in Provence, in order to form a junction 
with Murat at Rome ; but as no clearer motive 
suggested itself to the public mind, this intention 
was generally admitted. In the mean time, Bona- 
parte hastened to enlighten the inhabitants of the 
south with respect to the motive of his visit, 
declaring that the same sentiments of tenderness 
and humanity which had induced him to lay aside 



10 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

his imperial authority, at the time when the 
allies were in possession of Paris and masters of 
France, — and to which abdication he was com- 
pelled by the hope that peace would be restored 
to this unhappy and desolated country, — had 
now operated on him to forego the enjoyment of 
tranquillity, and forsake the rock in the midst 
of the waves, on which he had suffered exile, in 
order to rouse the country to a due sense of its 
inglorious sufferings, and to avenge its wrongs. 
He promised to restore to France the boundary 
of the Khine, to confirm to the people the chart 
they had adopted, and to reform all the errors 
of which the reigning powers had been guilty, in 
their misinterpretation of the articles that had 
been already discussed. 

The tenderness professed by Bonaparte for the 
people, and his sympathy for their sufferings 
under the reign of the Bourbons, raised a smile 
on the lips of the Parisians ; yet there were per- 
sons who felt their vain-glory awakened by the 
promises of again extending their frontier to the 
Khine, and obliging the Prussians to fall back 
from the lately ceded territory. The almost uni- 
versality of France, however, which had groaned 
so long under the rod of Napoleon, and had 
blessed its deliverance from his sway, still con- 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 11 

sidered him as the enemy of public and individual 
repose, and exulted in the hope that this abun- 
dant excess of tenderness was about to expose 
him to the punishment so long due to his crimes ; 
for of his speedy capture there appeared no 
reasonable cause of doubt. 

Whilst the members of the government encour- 
aged this belief in the public, they were not less 
aware that it was no ordinary disturber with 
whom they had to deal. It was deemed expe- 
dient to assemble all the authorities, civil as well 
as military. On the 8th March, the Chambers 
of Peers and of Deputies, which had been pro- 
rogued on the last day of the past year to the first 
of May, were called together for the instant dis- 
patch of business; and the king issued a royal 
proclamation, in which Napoleon Bonaparte was 
declared a traitor and a rebel for havino^ intro- 
duced himself by force of arms into the depart- 
ment of the Yar, enjoining all civil and military 
governors, and even private citizens, to lay hands 
on him (de lui courir sus), and drag him before a 
court-martial to identify his person and put the 
law in force against him. The same punishment 
was enjoined against the military, and other per- 
sons of whatever rank, who shall have accompa- 
nied or followed Bonaparte in his invasion of the 



12 NAKRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

French territory, unless they submitted within 
the term of eight days. In this crime were in- 
cluded by the same proclamation, to be punished 
as its accomplices and adherents, as tending to 
change the form of government and provoke civil 
war, all administrators civil and military, the 
chiefs as well as those employed in the said 
administrations, payers and receivers of the pub- 
lic monies, even such private citizens as should 
directly or indirectly give aid and assistance to 
the invader. 

While the government at Paris was thus em- 
ployed, Bonaparte, who had assumed the modest 
title of Lieutenant-General in the name of his son, 
had trusted but feebly to the effects of his own 
proclamation. Finding that the provincials near 
the coast, little solicitous about the liberty and 
equality he promised to introduce, and still less 
so for the boundary of the Rhine, were not eager 
to volunteer their services in his cause, he col- 
lected his small band of six hundred men and be- 
gan his march towards Lyons, on his well known 
and favourite system, (Taller en avant. 

Bonaparte's march to Lyons, without cavalry, 
artillery, and other accessories of martial array, 
appeared to the Parisians so chimerical, that they 
judged it as impracticable that he should reach 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 13 

Lyons as that lie should march to Paris. They 
began to wonder that the news of his beino" 
taken and destroyed with his small host, of which 
they were all well assured by private correspon- 
dence, was not officially confirmed. The govern- 
ment, which had received no such conformation, 
published the assurances of General Marchand, 
who commanded Grenoble, which was the south- 
ern military depot, of the safety of this great 
station and the fidelity of the troops. 

The garrison of Grenoble construed the word 
'' fidelity " into a different meaning from that of 
its commander. Bonaparte presented himself at 
their gates; they fraternized immediately, and 
not only delivered up the depot, but the general 
by whom they were commanded. The seventh 
regiment of the line, commanded by Colonel La 
Bedoyere, had marched out and joined Bona- 
parte on the road between Vizille and Grenoble. 
Thus M. de la Bedoyere was the first officer who 
submitted to the invader, and may boast the pre- 
eminence in treason. Madame de la Bedoyere, of 
an ancient and honourable family, w\as so affected 
by her husband's treachery, that, taking her chil- 
dren with her, she forsook his house, fled to her 
relations, and left him to enjoy alone his guilty 
triumph. 



14 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

The division in families is not one of the least 
evils of civil discord. Its serpents writhe upon 
the calm bosom of domestic life, and transform all 
its joys to bitterness. How many near relations 
have been within this little month thus rudely 
torn from each other ! There is a point in public 
dissension and public calamity, when the rankled 
mind revolts at opposition, and the affections of 
private life seem light in the great balance of 
destiny. 

"Pour toi, de qui la main seme ici les forfaits, 
Et fait naitre la guerre au milieu de la paix ; 
Ton nom seul parmi nous divise les families, 
Les epoux, les parens, les meres, et les filles ; 
La discords civile est par-tout sur ta trace, 
Assemblage inoui de mensonge et d'audace; 
T^^ran de ton pays, est->ce ainsi qu'en ce lieu 
Tu viens donner la paix ! ^' &c. ^ 

The Elbean band, which had hitherto since its 
landing been wandering among the mountains of 
the Var and the departments of the Lower Alps, 
was now swelled into the appearance of an army 
by the junction of the troops at Grenoble. Gen- 
eral Marchand, invited by Bonaparte to retake 
his command, answered, that during his reign as 
Emperor he had served him with fidelity ; that, 

^ Voltaike: Maliomet. 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 15 

released from this duty by his abdication, he had 
sworn allegiance to the existing government ; and, 
presenting his sword, surrendered himself as a 
prisoner, declaring that he would never be a 
traitor. ''General," said Bonaparte, "I acknowl- 
edge your services ; I have always looked on you 
as a true soldier; I see your position, and do not 
wish you to act contrary to your conscience. 
Take back your sword ; go to Paris, and tell your 
king that I shall soon visit him in the capital, and 
will treat him with all the consideration due to his 
virtues and his rank." 

The defection of the garrison of Grenoble 
roused into exertion the government, which had 
seemed to repose on the terror of its proclama- 
tions. Monsieur, the king's brother, and the Duke 
of Orleans, accompanied by Marshal Macdonald, 
repaired to Lyons in order to put that city in a 
state of resistance. Lyons was garrisoned by 
about two thousand regular troops, and its great 
population seemed to offer every means of retard- 
ing at least the progress of the invader; but the 
only weapons found to arm the inhabitants were 
three thousand muskets, and these were for the 
most part unfit for service. The aspect of the 
city was equivocal with respect to its loyalty, and 
the regular troops were decidedly in favour of the 



16 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

invader. His appearance before Lyons awakened 
the cries of ^' Vive I'Ernpereur ! " from the sol- 
diers, in which they were joined by the populace, 
and he entered without resistance that capital of 
the Gauls. The French princes retreated to Cler- 
mont in Auvergne, and soon after returned to 
Paris. 

Bonaparte had now traversed the country from 
the coasts to almost the centre of France, without 
resistance and without firing a shot ; and, having 
enthroned himself at Lyons, threw off the humble 
air of Lieutenant-General of his son, as well as 
that of tenderness and sympathy for the sufferings 
of the nation ; and, unable to withstand the saluta- 
tions of "^ Vive TEmpereur ! " by the army, began 
to issue his imperial decrees with the protocole of 
" Napoleon, by the grace of God and the constitu- 
tions of the empire. Emperor of the French, &c.'* 

Several changes having been made during his 
absence in the persons composing his imperial 
administration both civil and military, he began 
by decreeing that in the judiciary bodies of every 
rank such arbitrary changes were to be regarded 
as null and void ; that all generals and officers 
who had taken service in the army or navy, and 
who had been emigrants, should give in their dis- 
mission and return to their homes 3 that the white 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 17 

cockade and the order of St. Louis, of the Holy 
Ghost, and of St. Michael, should be abolished, 
and that the national three-coloured flag and cock- 
ade should only be displayed ; that the military 
establishment of the king should be suppressed ; 
that the goods and chattels of the princes of the 
house of Bourbon should be sequestrated ; that 
the nobility and feudal titles were abolished ; that 
the emigrants who had entered with the king 
should quit the French territory ; and that the 
chamber of peers and deputies were dissolved. 

These imperial dispositions appeared to Bona- 
parte, no doubt, necessary to reunite the parti- 
sans of his old government ; but he could not 
dissemble to himself that, however agreeable his 
return might be to the citizens who had revelled 
in the sweets and emoluments of subordinate 
power, he had not been happy in securing the 
assent and auctions of any other classes of his 
subjects. Of this he had been duly informed 
during his residence in his island of Elba. Every 
vessel from France that touched his coast had 
gone laden with pamphlets, all filled with details 
of his crimes, arraigning him before the present 
and future ages, and written as if to console and 
avenge the nation, of which nothing is more re- 
markable than its physical courage and its moral 

2 



18 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

cowardice, for the silence with which it had 
borne his oppression. Nothing had been left 
unsaid ; many a terrible truth had been thundered 
in his ear ; many a foot had trampled upon the 
sick lion ; and the revolutionary maxim seemed 
entirely forgotten, ^^ qitil ny a que les morts qui 
ne reviennent pas'' The times were then past 
when the philosophers and the literati prophaned 
history, and the clergy Holy Writ, by their 
strange and grotesque applications. 

Bonaparte, conscious that his enchanter's rod 
was now broken, that he was no longer believed 
to be invincible, and that he was well known to 
be guilty, had recourse to new arts. He deemed 
it necessary to propose a voluntary descent from 
the height of his ancient dictatorship, and to de- 
clare himself the patron and popular chieftain of 
a free government. He concluded his decree of 
the suppression of the legislature, by ordering that 
the " electoral colleges of the departments of the 
empire should assemble at Paris in the course of 
next May, in an extraordinary assenihly of the 
Field of May, in order to take the measures 
necessary to correct and modify our constitutions 
according to the interest and will of the nation, 
and at the same time to be present at the corona- 
tion of the empress, our very dear and well- 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 19 

beloved spouse, and of our dear and well-beloved 



son." 



On the news of the possession of Lyons by 
Bonaparte and his army, now become formidable 
by its numbers, consternation began to operate 
on the Parisian world in the inverse ratio of its 
former incredulity. The same magical power 
which had led this extraordinary personage from 
his island to the centre of France seemed no less 
potent to protect his further attempts if it was 
his intention to wing his way to Paris. There 
Avas, however, no supernatural agency in this 
business ; there was nothing even very aston- 
ishing in this revolutionary phantasmagoria. 

It was scarcely to be imagined that Bonaparte 
would have throw^n himself with so much rashness 
and precipitation into the midst of France with a 
handful of follow^ers, and have attempted to trav- 
erse a country through which, but a few months 
before, he had passed to his place of exile loaded 
with the execrations of its inhabitants, and, even 
under the protection of his European conquerors, 
compelled to seek at times his personal safety by 
assuming the meanest disguises ; it could scarcely 
be imagined that he would have ventured to trace 
back his steps through this country as a con- 
queror, and have seated himself in the capital of 



20 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

the south, had he not depended on other forces 
than those of his followers, and assured to himself 
other means of success than the riches his Elbean 
sovereignt}^ afforded. Suspicions arose at Paris 
that there existed some strange neglect in certain 
departments of the administrations of govern- 
ment. It was observed that not only the southern 
dep6t of Grenoble had furnished the invader with 
every implement of war, and that its garrison had 
shown a singular alacrity in declaring themselves 
traitors, but that Lyons had been left without 
defence or the arms necessary for the national 
guard. It seemed strange, also, that the fleet at 
Toulon had remained in the harbour, and that, 
were it merely to exercise the sailors, no cruise 
had taken place in the space that reaches from 
the isle of Elba to the shores of Provence. It is 
certain that the conspiracy had been carried on 
during some months, with more good fortune than 
address. The discovery of one part of the plot 
was accidental, or, to borrow the pious ejacula- 
tion of the new minister of war, seemed to have 
been made by the miraculous interposition of 
Providence. 

Marshal Mortier, Duke of Treviso, who com- 
manded the troops stationed in the north, had left 
Paris to return to his headquarters at Lisle, when 



NAKRATIYE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 21 

he met on the indirect road he had taken a body 
of troops, consisting of about ten thousand men, on 
their march to Paris. The astonished Marshal 
demanded where they were going, and found that 
they had received orders to march upon Paris, to 
save the city from pillage and rescue the king 
from the hands of the populace. He examined 
the orders, saw they were forgeries, and ordered 
his soldiers to march back instantly to their 
quarters. 

The town of La Fere, in Picardy, was a north- 
ern military depot, under the command of M. 
D'Aboville. The General Lefebre Denouettes 
had entered this town with troops drawn from 
the garrison of Cambray, under the command of 
General Lallemand and his brother, demanding 
military accommodation for two thousand men. 
The commander of La Fere observed that there 
was somewhat singular in this march ; and having 
soon obtained proofs of the traitorous intentions 
of these generals, he put his garrison, at an early 
hour, in order of battle, and answered the invita- 
tion of joining Bonaparte by the cry of " Vive le 
Roi 1 " in which he was joined by his troops. 
The rebel generals sought their safety in flight, 
but were soon after taken. 

Thus Bonaparte's project was neither rash 



22 NAKRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

nor ill-concerted. While he advanced by rapid 
marches to Lyons, for which due preparations had 
been made by the removal of all obstacles, and 
while the garrison of Grenoble assisted his arrival, 
his partisans in the north were to furnish him 
with arms, lead on the troops under their com- 
mand, and take possession of Paris. The acci- 
dental meeting of a powerful detachment of the 
northern army by Marshal Mortier, and the firm- 
ness of D'Aboville at La Fere, disconcerted this 
part of the plan, but at the same time convinced 
the government that the conspiracy was not con- 
fined to the south and to the troops that accom- 
panied Bonaparte. 



LETTER III. 



ArRiL, 1815. 



The discovery of a conspiracy before it be con- 
summated is generally considered as the destruc- 
tion of the enterprise for which it has been formed ; 
but the present plot extended too far to be en- 
dangered by the failure of any single ramification. 
Bonaparte's triumphant march ceased to be mar- 
vellous, when it became known that the army was 
entirely devoted to him ; that he had upon his 
arrival issued his imperial orders to the French 
troops in all the various stations in the kingdom ; 
that everywhere the military obeyed him with 
alacrity ; and that this army, like a snowball, aug- 
mented as it rolled on. 

The most considerable part of the French army, 
and particularly the imperial guard, had never 
joined in the execrations with which their chief 
had been loaded by the French nation. His name 
though proscribed, as well as the imperial eagle, 
were bound to their minds with indissoluble affec- 
tion ; and as they attributed to themselves a share 



24 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

in his military glory, so they had continued to 
sympathize in his disgrace. Such were the honour- 
able feelings of a great number ; but the most 
considerable part, who felt not this sort of eleva- 
tion, remembered, like the Israelites in the Wilder- 
ness, the flesh-pots of Egypt, and looked back with 
regret on those halcyon days when German bur- 
gomasters and substantial and well-prepared re- 
pasts awaited their arrival at a town or a village 
after the march or combat of the day ; and rapine 
and riot, at the expense of the invaded countries, 
filled up the intervals of what they styled the 
career of glory. 

A numerous class of the French army, under 
the influence of those immoral habits, felt that 
Bonaparte's banishment had been the death-blow 
to their hopes and their enjoyments. With fond 
regret those heroes of the eagle looked back on 
the auspicious days in which, till interrupted by 
the return of peace and the Bourbons, plunder 
and carnage had been the business of their lives. 
^^ Their occupation now was gone, — all pomp and 
circumstance of glorious war ! " The w^hole of the 
military were thoroughly imbued with the idea 
that they alone constituted the nation, that they 
were the first if not the only order in the state, 
and that the rest of the population were the Ilotes, 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 25 

or, in their modern military phraseology, '^ "peqidmr ^ 
These Spartans now found themselves sunk in 
importance, thrown by as incumbrances, and saw 
with indignation that their profession w^as dishon- 
oured by the peqidns, who under the name of na- 
tional guards had devoted themselves to the 
protection of their country as armed citizens. 
This military civic spirit, encouraged by the gov- 
ernment, had only served to increase the discon- 
tent of the regular troops ; so that it required no 
extraordinary effort in Bonaparte's agents to in- 
spire them with the hopes of the return of 
Saturnian times. 

Bonaparte was well apprized of the situation of 
the army ; and of its obedience to his mandate he 
was no less assured. The chiefs the most devoted 
to him were of course the only persons initiated 
in the secret, and to their discretion was entrusted 
the care of awakening and fostering in their sol- 

^ '^J. am sorr}'-, '^ said a minister to Marshal L , '^ that, 

after having long waited for you, we are seated at table 
before you arrive.'^ ^'I should have come earlier," replied 
the Marshal, ^'but I have been detained by some pequins." 
^' Pequins! " exclaimed the company, '' what are pequins 7 '' 
^^ Oh, you know," rejoined the Marshal, ^^we o,^ jpequins 
all that is not military.'' ^^ Yes," said the minister, '' comme 
nous autres nous appellons iiiilitaire, tout ce qui n'est pas 
civilJ^ 



26 NARRAXIYE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

diers the glorious hope of new achievements, new 
honours, and new spoils. With such auxiliaries it 
required no great effort of courage in Bonaparte 
to attempt seizing the reins of empire. Every 
necessary precaution had been taken to secure his 
safety, from the place of his landing to Lyons. 
The national guard, indeed, of a little town into 
which he had entered on his passage assured the 
prefect that they could secure him with the great- 
est ease. The prefect answered that he had re- 
ceived no orders, and refused the proffered aid. 

This military conspiracy had some auxiliaries in 
other classes of the community. There still ex- 
isted the remains of a party in France which had 
during a short time wielded the sceptre as despoti- 
cally as Bonaparte himself. This was the faction 
of the Jacobins, once no less powerful with the 
insignia of the red-cap than Napoleon with his 
imperial crown, of whom some one, seeing him 
pass in pomp through the streets of Paris, ob- 
served, " C'est Kobespierre a cheval." The Jaco- 
bins had long been reduced to such death-like 
silence that the race was deemed extinct. Bona- 
parte had received the first rudiment of his 
political knowledge in their school, and been 
denominated by high authority their child and 
champion. On his first entrance into power he 



KARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 27 

adopted the system of fusion, and employed such 
of the chiefs of the faction as had escaped the 
scaffold. He was, however, too prudent not to 
keep the party in proper subjection while he con- 
tinued to practise their favorite maxim, the secret 
of all their power, " that of daring.'' -^ The exile 
of some of the most turbulent leaders among the 
populace of the Fauxbourgs, by Bonaparte's or- 
ders, had reduced the rest to silence ; and though 
they murmured at his injustice, they dreaded and 
worshipped his power. 

This class was at present too obscure to excite 
any apprehension in the government; with the 
exception of a few chiefs, they were to be found 
only in the poorest of the labouring tribe. They 
had, however, been useful on some occasions; 
and in revolutions no means of power ought to be 
neglected. Subsidies were necessary to raise these 
dormant allies into action; and subsidies were 
found by the relations and friends of Bonaparte, 
and largely distributed by their emissaries. 

The tranquil possession of Lyons by Bonaparte, 
and the increase of his army by deserters from 
the royal cause, now excited the most serious ap- 
prehensions in Paris. The government gave as- 

^ Osez was declared by one of the Jacobin coryphees, in a 
report to the Convention, to be the secret of all revolutions. 



28 KAERATIYE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

surances that measures were taken, if Bonaparte 
should attempt the road of Paris, to cut him off ; 
and preparations were made to collect a formid- 
able army at Melun, a town on the Seine, at the 
distance of ten leagues from Paris ; and another at 
Montargis, a few hours' march from Fontaine- 
bleau. It was asserted that he would soon be 
placed within two fires, since Marshal Nej had 
already reached Lons le Saulnier, where an army 
was stationed, amounting to twelve or fifteen 
thousand men, with which he was about to fall on 
his rear. This officer, who was called the Prince 
of Moskwa from the active share he had taken in 
the combat near that river, had in an effusion of 
loyalty repaired to the Tuileries, and proffering 
his services had assured the king, on receiving the 
command of this important station, that he would 
bring Bonaparte to Paris in an iron cage. To 
which the king replied, with mild dignity, that 
this was not what he required, and that he only 
desired of the marshal to drive back the invader. 
The Prince de la Moskwa took his leave of the 
king, carried with him a million of livres for the 
pay of the troops, and departed. 

Though it was greatly apprehended that the 
spirit of disaffection had pervaded the army in 
general, it was hoped that a part would yet be 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 29 

found " faithful among the faithless." The knowl- 
edge that armies were placed in front, on the 
flanks, and in the rear cheered the drooping spirits 
of the Parisians, who, applauding the loyalty of 
the national guard rather than confiding in their 
prowess, saw with satisfaction the departure of 
the marshals to head the armies, and particularly 
of the Prince de la Moskwa, whose assurances to 
the king were cited in his own phraseology, that 
he would bring the Sovereign of Elba in an iron 
cage to Paris. 

Bonaparte meanwhile, after haranguing the 
people of his good city of Lyons, took an affec- 
tionate leave of the citizens and proceeded on his 
way to Paris. Traversing Macon, Tournus, and 
Autun, he reached Auxerre, where he was imme- 
diately joined by Marshal Ney, with his whole 
division, and whom he had ordered to hoist the 
three-coloured flag. A part of this division was 
well disposed toward the king, and the troops 
would probably have done their duty had they 
not been surprized into treason. Marshal Ney 
issued at Lons le Saulnier the following proclama- 
tion : — 

" Officers and Soldiers ! the cause of the Bourbons is 
for ever lost. The lawful dynasty, which the French 
nation has adopted, is about to ascend the throne. It is 



30 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

to the Emperor Napoleon alone, our sovereign, that be- 
longs the right of reigning over our fine country, &c. 
Soldiers, I have often led you to victory, I will now lead 
you to join that immortal phalanx which the Emperor 
Napoleon is conducting to Paris, and which will be there 
in a few days ; and there our hopes and our happiness 
will be for ever realized. \ 

" Vive I'Empereur ! 
(Signed) " The Prince op Moskwa.'* 

Such have been the vicissitudes of opinion and 
the changes of the political creed of individuals 
amidst the various phases of the French Kevolu- 
tion, that considerable allowances may be made 
for many ; but no morality however lax, no char- 
ity however lenient, can forbear stigmatizing 
with eternal ignominy the conduct of certain ac- 
tors in this turbulent drama : at the head of this 
black column must be inscribed the name of the 
Prince of Moskwa. The services of this marshal 
were not demanded ; they were offered with an 
exuberance of zeal for the royal cause, and his 
ardour was repressed rather than excited by the 
king, to whom he gave with eagerness the sacred 
pledge of his honour. 

When the tidings of this fatal disaffection 
reached Paris, when it was known that this great 
division of the army, on which all the public hope 
reposed, had gone over to the invader, horror and 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 31 

despair filled every bosom. Unavailing execra- 
tions against such black perfidy as that of Marshal 
Ney hung upon every lip ; and the red iron, with 
which he is condemned to be marked in history, 
seemed a slight compensation for the wrongs of 
his injured country. 

Napoleon entered Fontainebleau on the 20th 
March, at four in the morning. He learned that 
the Bourbons had quitted Paris, and that the capi- 
tal was free. With his accustomed superstition 
for particular days, he remembered also that this 
was the birthday of the King of Rome ; he there- 
fore departed immediately, determined to enter 
Paris that evening. 

Thus in the space of three short weeks did this 
daring soldier transfer the seat of empire from his 
rocky exile to the palace of the Tuileries. We 
saw him seated on his throne, and we believed it 
to be almost a delusion of our senses. The rapid- 
ity of his march appears a prodigy of which his- 
tory offers no example ; the enterprise seems un- 
paralleled in all that is great and daring ; and his 
pacific triumph bears the stamp of the general 
assent of the nation. Such conclusions would, 
however, be most erroneous. There was nothing 
miraculous in his journey. He was quietly con- 
veyed to Paris in his caleche, drawn by four post- 



32 NARKATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

horses which he found prepared at every relay ; 
and it required but ordinary courage to advance 
through a country where all that was hostile to 
his purpose were defenceless and unarmed, and all 
that could have opposed his progress hailed him 
with acclamations of transport. But if the trium- 
phal march of Napoleon Bonaparte from the coast 
of Provence to the capital of France presents, when 
investigated in its details, no marvel to the imagina- 
tion, it teaches at least a most tremendous lesson 
to mankind ; it adds a new page of instruction on 
the danger of military influence ; it shows us that 
no other ties are so powerful as those which bind 
the soldier to his chief. What the French army 
would have called rebellion was resistance to the 
voice of their general. The military ravagers of 
other countries can never become the civic defend- 
ers of their own. Their bosoms beat high with 
the unextinguishable hope of what mankind, in its 
hour of madness, has agreed to call by the name 
of glory. They had acquired under Bonaparte 
that fatal ascendant which led them to consider 
even their own country as their conquest. Care- 
less of its miseries, forming a class apart from their 
fellow-citizens, like the Janizaries of the east or 
the Pretorian bands of the Roman empire, they 
consulted only their own triumph, an d disposed of 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 33 

crowns and sceptres at their will. The land 
which gave them birth, and which they were 
destined to defend, they have covered with des- 
olation, and have opened an abyss to France 
from which the heart recoils, and where the eye 
fears to penetrate. 



LETTER lY. 

May, 1815. 

Gloomily arose the morning of the 20th March 
on the inhabitants of Paris. It was known that 
Louis XVIIL had left his capital at midnight, and 
no heart was unmoved by the affecting detail of 
his departure. The national guard at the Tuil- 
eries melted into tears at the sight of their unfor- 
tunate monarch as he descended the steps of the 
chateau, knelt as he passed through their ranks, 
pressed to their lips his hands, even the flaps of 
his coat, and, conjuring him not to depart, de- 
clared that they were ready to sacrifice their lives 
in his defence. The king endeavoured to calm 
their emotion by expressing his belief that he 
should again return to the palace of his fathers ; 
while the Comte d'Artois, deeply dejected, min- 
gled his tears with those of these faithful citizens. 

During the preceding day the people of Paris 
had been agitated by doubt, fear, hope, and 
expectation. But the ffital certainty had not 
reached them. Their king was a fugitive, and 
the tyrant was hastening to fill the vacant throne. 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 35 

He drew nearer every minute ; resistance was 
forbidden because it was useless, and Paris was 
once more destined to bend her prostrate head 
to the dust. Peace, commerce, security, fortune, 
children, — all that binds the human heart to 
existence, all that cheers and gives it value, was 
again to be sacrificed at the shrine of the usurper. 
Early in the morning the shopkeepers were busily 
employed in changing their signs. Everywhere 
the crested lily disappeared, and the victorious 
eagle again stretched over the portals his terrific 
wings. 

The northern boulevard, from the gates of St. 
Denis and St. Martin to the Barrier, was crowded 
in the afternoon by Bonaparte's allies, the mob of 
the eastern fauxbourgs. Many hideous figures 
had crept from their holes on this triumphant 
occasion ; and as a refreshing subsidy had been 
distributed to these new sovereigns, they had 
qualified themselves by intoxication to share in 
the benefit of the ''joyeuse entree^ Paris had not 
been affrighted by such appearances, male and 
female, since the days of their former reign in 
the time of terror, when their ministry had been 
actively employed and duly rewarded as revolu- 
tionary committee-men, attendants at the daily 
assassinations, and what was called " les tricoteuses 



36 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

de la guillotine'^ on account of their practice of 
knittinoj at the foot of the scaffold while thev 
were waiting for the sad spectacle. 

It required all the vigilance of the national 
guard of the city to keep the semblance of order ; 
for the few regular troops who remained in Paris, 
ashamed of such confederates, disdained the occu- 
pation. The day closed, and Napoleon had not 
yet appeared. He was aw^are of the greetings 
that awaited him, and lingered on the road till 
night should screen his entry, and save him the 
disgrace of such a reception. The mob, or such 
at least as could yet vociferate Yive V Empereur ! 
remained at their posts ; while he, traversing 
other streets than those in which he was expected, 
arrived at nine in the evening at the palace of 
the Tuileries. 

No one in this inconstant nation changes with 
more dexterity than a journalist. He is always 
prepared for a coup de theatre, a sudden change 
of scene. Whatever power prevails he instantly 
respects its authority, and seizes eagerly the per- 
mission to become its slave. The 21st March, 
the newspapers bearing the stamp of the eagle 
proclaimed in pompous style the entry of the 
Emperor Napoleon on the preceding evening in 
his capital. 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 37 

Tumult and disorder prevailed in the streets, 
which were soon filled with newly arrived troops, 
and the soldiers and populace were alike decorated 
with a bunch of violets. That lovely and earliest 
flower of spring, the symbol of timid beauty and 
the soft harbinger of summer, had been trans- 
formed into the badge of a sanguinary faction. 
The military, who were initiated in the secret 
of Bonaparte's intended return in spring, had ap- 
plied to him the nickname of Le Pere la Violette. 
Rings of a violet colour had been worn by his 
party, and the name of the violet was pronounced, 
with other words of mysterious import, and veiled, 
like the modest flower itself, from general obser- 
vation. But on the morning of the 21st March 
the guilty, the triumphant violet appeared glaring 
in the button-hole of every Bonapartist's coat, or 
stuck into his hat with all the ostentation of an 
order or a cockade. After such a profanation, 
how many springs must pass over the violet be- 
fore its character will be retrieved and its purity 
appear unsullied ! 

It had been the policy of the Bourbons to de- 
press as far as possible that dangerous spirit which 
pervaded the soldiery in favour of their old leader. 
This, which was a wise and necessary policy not 
only for their own personal repose but that of the 



38 NAREATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

country, served unliappily to increase the hostile 
dispositions of the military. They beheld not only 
the whole of their importance vanished as the first 
body of the state, but saw that all personal confi- 
dence on the part of the king was withheld from 
them. Louis XVIII. had formed his military 
establishment of gardes du corps, mousquetaires, 
and Swiss regiments, composed of men who had 
not served in the armies of the late Emperor. 
This measure was blamed by those who asserted 
that had the king confided his person to the care 
of the imperial guard, flattered by such a mark 
of confidence and called upon by honour to justify 
it, they would never have betrayed their trust. 
This might be true of the greater number, but 
perhaps not of all ; and the chance was scarcely 
to be risked in a circumstance so important, and 
where an error of opinion would have been fatal. 

This avowed dissatisfaction of the military was 
highly favourable to the plans of Bonaparte, and 
was promoted by his emissaries in almost every 
corps, who w^ere taught to raise their views to 
brighter destinies, and w^ho were flattered with 
the hope that a day of new glories might soon 
again break on them with renovated splendour. 
No correspondence had been for a long time more 
active than that of Paris and Porto Ferrajo. And 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 39 

its frequency seemed to pass unnoticed by the 
government. 

At the review which took place the day after 
his arrival, Napoleon, addressing the soldiers, told 
them that he had landed with only six hundred 
men because he had relied on the affection of his 
people, and on the remembrance of his old sol- 
diery ; that he had not been disappointed; that 
he thanked them ; and that this new-acquired 
glory belonged to them and to the people. 
" Soldiers," added Bonaparte, " the throne of the 
Bourbons is illegitimate, since it has been erected 
by foreign hands, proscribed by the voice of the 
nation expressed in every national assembly, and 
offering no guarantee except to a small number 
of arrogant men w^hose pretensions are hostile to 
its rights. Soldiers, the imperial throne alone can 
guarantee the rights of the people, and especially 
the first of interests, that of our glory. We are 
going to march to drive from our territory those 
princes, the auxiliaries of foreigners ; the nation 
will not only aid us with its vows, but will follow 
the impulse we shall give it. The French people 
and myself rely on you. We will not interfere in 
the affairs of other nations, but woe to those that 
interfere with our own." 

Such was Bonaparte's first confession of faith at 



40 ISTARRA^TIYE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

the TuilerieSj and which was well suited to such 
an auditory as his soldiers, who desired to hear of 
nothing more agreeable than the project to march 
en avant, and who highly relished the idea of the 
blessings of a foreign campaign. 

But although in possession of the seat of em- 
pire, Bonaparte did not dissemble to himself that 
he had already a formidable foe to combat, which 
was public opinion ; and though he could not con- 
firm the first falsehood he had published, — that 
of the twenty years' truce, which he had brought in 
his pocket, — he did not hesitate to afiirm that he 
fully expected, on his return, the general acquies- 
cence of Europe. His partizans proclaimed that 
Austria, in sending back the empress and the young 
Napoleon, evidently proved that it was friendly to 
the cause of the invasion. It was equally clear 
that the English commissary at the Isle of Elba 
had connived, by his opportune absence, at the 
escape of Bonaparte; and that the progress of 
French manufactures, and other causes of national 
jealousy, would lead England to foment disturb- 
ances in France, and would render it very lukewarm 
in the support of a new coalition ; that the forces 
of the Russian empire were beyond the Vistula, 
the finances of that power could not permit any 
great efforts, and it was also too much occupied 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 41 

with its internal affairs and new acquisitions to be 
at all interested in French concerns. The Ger- 
man princes would follow the example of Austria; 
so that the only power that could be earnest in 
the contention would be Prussia, with whom it 
would be easy to arbitrate. 

It cannot be supposed that Bonaparte's minis- 
ters or his council of state were the dupes of these 
reasonings, or that they gave credit to any of his 
assertions respecting the friendly dispositions of 
the princes of Europe. They had been long habi- 
tuated to his impostures, and were at no pains to 
conceal their opinion of the flimsiness of the foun- 
dations on which he built his hopes, the fallacy of 
his arguments, and the inevitable evils which his 
precipitancy had brought on himself and the coun- 
try. One of his ministers, — he whose opinions 
had the greatest weight both with Bonaparte and 
with the French of all parties, who knew with the 
most dexterity how " to strip the gilding off the 
knave," — far from concealing the truth, in these 
discussions, always finished by the assertion, " enfin, 
vous etes un homme perdu." 

V/hile this debate on probabilities was yet car- 
rying on in the divan of the Tuileries, a decree of 
the Congress of the 10th March arrived, and put 
to flight the fairy visions of peace by the intelli- 



42 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

gence that the empress and her son were detained 
at Schoenbrunn. Such was the result of the 
twenty years' truce, of the announced coronation 
of his wife and son, and of the Austrian ahiance ! 

Bonaparte could not parry this stroke. He now 
stood before his ministers and council convicted of 
deceit and falsehood. He had committed not only 
the safety of the army and of France, but what 
was of some import with these ministers and coun- 
sellors, their own personal safety and their for- 
tunes. His blusterings and his rhapsodies were no 
longer the bursts of thunder; he shrunk at the 
menacing look and retort of the ministers, and 
was obliged to solicit advice and pray for counsel, 
which it was no longer dangerous to give to the 
chief who had forty legions at his orders. 

In the mean time the people of Paris were filled 
with consternation at the evils with which they 
were menaced. The twenty years' truce in Bona- 
parte's pocket had never been believed an in- 
stant except by a few of the lowest class ; the 
royalists wept over the fall of the monarchy, and 
the republicans felt no great confidence in assur- 
ances of liberty and rights that were to be guar- 
anteed only by imperial authority. 

In this hour of calamity one only hope of deliv- 
erance visited the bosoms of the Parisians -, it was 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 43 

a melancholy hope, and wore something of the 
sickly hue of despair : this was no other than the 
determined resistance of the allied powers of 
Europe to the usurper ! Alas ! to what wretch- 
edness is that unhappy country reduced which is 
compelled to wish for the intervention of foreign- 
ers to avenge its wrongs ! The allied powers de- 
clared that they would approach as the friends of 
France, and that they only made war against its 
tyrant. But it could not be dissembled that a 
million of friends in arms, with a cortege of bay- 
onets, cannon, bombs, shells, and Congreve rockets, 
came at least in questionable shape, and that the 
visit had a formidable aspect. The character of 
the generous monarchs who led on these innumer- 
able hosts was indeed well calculated to inspire 
security. Their conduct last year had been so 
highly philanthropic that they had themselves 
formed a new precedent of generosity, which al- 
ready belonged to history, and which must be 
henceforth the rule of future conquerors who 
would avoid the eternal reproaches of mankind ; 
but if in the ordinary state of the world there 
may be perhaps a greater portion of distress than 
of pity, how could it be hoped that general bene- 
volence w^ould exclude partial evil in circumstances 
so extraordinary ? How difficult to say to the 



44 NAERATIYE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

tempest of war, " Thus far shalt thou go, and no 
farther ! " 

In the mean time, society in the salons of Paris 
avenged itself of the government by the most bit- 
ter animadversions on all that passed ; and the 
downfal of the usurper was predicted with cer- ' 
tainty in all good company. If Bonaparte could 
still boast of partizans among the men, it is at 
least certain that he found few among the women. 

That sex, which in this country has so powerful 
an influence on the great as well as the little inte- 
rests of society, had long since declared against 
him. With the exception of a few ladies of 
Napoleon's court, which on account of its military 
composition might have been properly called his 
camp, and a few of the lowest class, the women of 
France were unanimously royalists. Every senti- 
ment of female nature might indeed be naturally 
supposed to be averse to a system of tyranny and 
blood ; but these feelings belonged not in this in- 
stance to a vague, general opinion. The women of 
France had found tyranny brought home to their 
very bosoms;-^ its "iron had entered into their 

^ The prefects had secret orders to send lists of the most 
wealthy young ladies of their respective departments. Their 
parents then received what was called an invitation, which 
meant an order, to consent to their marriage with certain 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 45 

souls." They had felt it poisoning the sweetness 
of domestic life, shedding bitterness over all its 
charms, and blasting all its enjoyments. Who 
had not wept for a brother, an affianced lover, a 
husband, or a son ? Who had not lamented the 
years of youth wasted without hope, or those of 
mature age without consolation ? How many 
Rachels mourned for their children, and would 
not be comforted because they were not? Con- 
scription — what a terrible word ! How little 
you can feel or comprehend all its meaning ! Oh, 
no ! it has drawn no tears from your eyes, it has 
awakened no anguish in your bosom ! They only 
understand it well whose children have been ex- 
posed to its savage grasp. 

You know that I have adopted since their in- 
fancy my two nephews, the children of my only 
sister: you have not forgotten Cecilia, who in 
dying left them to my care. I have educated and 
loved them, — not with what is called instinctive 
fondness, which perhaps is an illusion, but with 
the steadfast affection of long habit, which binds 

military favourites, who possessed nothing but the Iron 
Crown and the order of the Legion of Honour. Many of 
these marriages took place ; and the most opulent merchants 
and bankers of Paris, in giving their daughters, found their 
strong chests also put in requisition and consigned to the dis- 
cretion of their sons-in-law. 



46 NARRATIYE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

US bj such endearing ties to the objects we have 
reared and cherished. If there is some thins; more 
tender in nature than the sentiment I feel for 
them, they know it not ; for they can recollect no 
mother but myself, and therefore they reward my 
cares with all the feelings of fihal attachment. 
My nephews then are unto me as children. They 
are the dear relics of her who was born my friend, 
and whose loss was the more irreparable, since the 
friends acquired in a foreign country, however 
valuable, are not those of infancy, not those to 
whom it can be fondly said, " We grew together." 
My eldest nephew had attained the fatal age, in 
the beginning of March, 1814, and was forced to 
draw his lot as a conscript. He was exempted as 
being a student in theology, in the new protestant 
college of Montaiiban ; but this was only a re- 
prieve, and this year, had not Bonaparte been 
overthrown, he as well as all the other students 
would probably have been compelled to leave 
their college and take up arms. Had the same 
tyranny continued to prevail, the same fate would 
have awaited his brother. 

A thousand little mystic inventions, contrivances 
of the heart, were employed by the women ex- 
pressive of their opinions and affections, and in 
which " more was meant than met the ear." 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 47 

Many a sign was given and received, v^^hich, like 
that of the Freemasons, was only known to the 
initiated. The colour of a flower or a ribbon be- 
came an aifair of state ; the perfumes of the violet 
were held in as much abhorrence as if they had 
shed the poisons of the Upas ; and not only the 
devoted lily, but all white flowers being forbidden, 
the colour generally adopted by the Parisian ladies 
was blue, the royal colour and the symbol of con- 
stancy. New royalist songs were every day writ- 
ten, and adapted to simple well-known airs in 
which all could join. These songs flew like elec- 
tric fire through Paris ; how many rosy lips re- 
peated with fond enthusiasm the favourite close, 
'^ II reviendra ! " Chamfort long since observed of 
France that it was " une monarchic absolue, tem- 
peree par des chansons." 

But it was not in the polite circles only of the 
Fauxbourg St. Germain (the west-end of the town 
of Paris) that the women flocked round the white 
standard of the Bourbons. Les Dames de la 
Halle, the Covent-Garden of that city, were also 
the declared adherents of the race of their kings. 
Daring indeed would have been that man, and 
fearless of female vengeance, who would have 
ventured to apostrophize one of those ladies by 
the opprobrious appellation of " une dame de la 



48 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

violette," the epithet given to the Bonapartists. 
The women of the Halle recollected, or at least 
knew by tradition, of many ancient privileges 
which had belonged to their order, — such as pre- 
senting themselves on certain days at court, and 
of offering bouquets to their sovereign on joyous 
or solemn occasions. They remembered too the 
halcyon times when sugar and coffee were cheap, 
and their cups overflowed with that reviving bev- 
erage. The women of this class also were wives 
and mothers ; they too had suffered the pang of 
separation ; they had bid the last farewel to their 
sons ; they also knew, to use the words of the ora- 
tor, " what a parent feels when deprived of the 
hope of dying before her child." 

Les Dames de la Halle, who discussed together 
the great events that were passing in tones too 
loud and language too offensive to be tolerated 
by the government, received an intimation that 
those who talked politics would lose their places, 
— which here depend upon the police, the regu- 
lator of all human affairs in this country ; watching 
over all, the great and the minute, and surveying 
alike what passes under the painted roofs of the 
palace and the umbrella-sheds of the market-place. 
The ladies of the Halle, however, found a means 
of declaring their sentiments by singing contin- 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 49 

imlly a favourite air, in which the burden of the 
song consisted of a play upon ^yords, and might 
be read, " Donnez-nous notre pair de ganis,'' or 
"Donnez-nous notre Pere de gand!'' (Ghent.) 
The police heard in silence this^ew de mots, which 
was beyond the pale of its jurisdiction, and subject 
to no pains or penalties. 



LETTER V. 

May, 1815. 

M. DE BuFFON observes, that the most ferocious 
wolf, when taken in a snare, becomes the most 
affrighted and cowardly of animals, and suffers 
himself to be chained without resistance. Such 
was now the situation of Bonaparte. His min- 
isters were the masters of his fate, and would 
perhaps at this moment have saved their country 
had they not feared his allies of the fauxbourgs 
and the army. 

He was, however, made to understand that he 
must lay aside past illusions ; that the shouts of 
the soldiery or the mob were no proofs of pop- 
ularity ; that he must be conscious of being re- 
garded with horror by the generality of the 
French nation ; and that he could only maintain 
his power by renouncing the opinions on which 
he had founded and exercised his authority, and 
by a speedy return to the original principles of 
the French revolution. 

The class of politicians who supported these 
principles was Bonaparte's insurmountable aver- 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 51 

sion ; they had indeed submitted, like others, to 
his imperial mandates, but they still fostered re- 
bellious opinions, and were out of the pale of that 
principle of unity which was the name he gave to 
his own despotism. He attributed to these ideo- 
logues every mishap. Ideology had been the 
cause of the failure of the attack on Kussia, as he 
formally declared to the senate on his return from 
that expedition. His war against ideology was 
incessant, and his hatred inveterate ; but now, 
seeing that his own counsellors were become the 
proselytes of this doctrine, he appeared to capitu- 
late, upon the condition, that, as the people were 
to be sovereigns, he should at least retain the title 
of sovereign over them. 

This new profession of political faith was pro- 
mulgated to the public a few days after Bona- 
parte's arrival at the Tuileries, in the form of an 
extract from the register of the deliberations, 
declaring " that the Council of State, on resuming 
its functions, deems it to be its duty to make 
known the principles which are the rules of its 
opinions and its conduct." This preamble was 
judged necessary to instruct the public that the 
Council of State were free to have principles, and 
to act accordingly. It was also a kind of respon- 
sibility, or caution, for Bonaparte's better conduct. 



52 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

Then follows the ideology: "The sovereignty 
resides in the people ; the people is the only law- 
ful source of power. In 1789 the people regained 
its rights, which had been for so long a time 
usurped or unacknowledged." The extract from 
the deliberations continued to state that " the 
feudal monarchy had been abolished by the Na- 
tional Assembly, and that a constitutional mon- 
archy and a representative government had taken 
its place ; that the resistance of the Bourbons to 
these national decrees had occasioned their fall 
and banishment; and that the people, by its 
votes, had twice consecrated the new form of 
government established by its representatives." 
Here ended the history of popular government, 
and of the constitutional labours of the national 
assembhes. Bonaparte is then brought on the 
scene. The council continues to state that in the 
eighth year of the republic Bonaparte, already 
crowned by victory, was raised to the government 
by the assent of the nation, and that a constitu- 
tion created the consular magistracy ; that in the 
tenth year he was appointed, by a senatorial 
decree, consul for life ; and that in the twelfth 
year another senatorial decree conferred on Napo- 
leon the imperial dignity, and made it hereditary 
in his family. These solemn acts were submitted 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 53 

to the acceptation of the people, and consecrated 
by near four millions of votes. 

Thus ended the Council of State's history of 
Bonaparte's usurpation, which was glossed over 
as decently as the circumstances admitted : it was 
not the moment to confess to the nation that this 
epocha had marked its utter degradation ; that it 
had been then despoiled of its sovereignty ; that 
its consecration of the imperial dignity by its vote 
was a mockery ; and that the imperial years fol- 
lowing the usurpations of the fourth and twelfth 
years had been marked by every turpitude, crime, 
tyranny, and disgrace that could afflict a country. 

These truths were not indeed withheld in the 
discussions at the Tuileries, although the respec- 
tive situation of the parties rendered the promul- 
gation imprudent. The Council of State con- 
cluded this historical sketch by animadversions on 
the Bourbons : — 

"The Bourbons had ceased to reign in France for 
twenty-two years ; they were forgotten by their contem- 
poraries, and were strangers to our laws, institutions, 
manners, and glory ; unknown to the present generation, 
they were remembered only by the wars they had excited 
against the country, and the internal discords they had 
occasioned. 

** France was invaded in 1814, and the capital taken. 
Foreigners created a provisionary government, assembled 



54 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

the minority of the senate, and forced it, against its mis- 
sion and its will, to destroy the existing constitutions, to 
overturn the imperial throne, and recal the family of 
the Bourbons. The senate, having been instituted only 
for the preservation of the constitutions of the empire, 
had no power to change them, but it decreed that Louis 
Stanislas Xavier should be proclaimed King of the 
French as soon as he should have accepted the constitu- 
tion, sworn to respect it, and cause it to be respected." 

There was a part of the history, which, however 
disagreeable to record, it was yet essential to 
mention : this was the state of affairs when the 
allies took possession of the capital, and when 
Bonaparte had been compelled to throw off the 
imperial robe. " The abdication of the Emperor 
Napoleon," say these counsellors, " was the result 
only of the unhappy situation to which France 
and the Emperor had been reduced by the events 
of the war, by treasons, and the occupation of the 
capital. The sole object of the abdication was to 
avoid civil war and the effusion of blood. This 
act, not sanctioned by the votes of the people, 
could not destroy the solemn contract formed be- 
tween them and the Emperor ; and also, though 
Napoleon might have been able to abdicate the 
crown personally, he could not sacrifice the rights 
of his son, called to reign after him." 

This knotty point of the abdication was pre- 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 55 

sumed by these casuists to have been tolerably 
resolved, and the incident of defeat was as gently 
glided over as the remembrance of so unfortunate 
an event could have admitted. The humane 
motives for the former, — namely, Napoleon's re- 
pugnance of shedding French blood, the solemn 
contract between the Emperor and the people, 
and his abdication not having received the sanc- 
tion of their votes, — were deemed at first too 
hazardous to publish. It was, however, at length 
decided to be as safe to mock the people as to 
enslave them, and the rhodomontade of tender- 
ness, solemn contracts, and unsanctioned abdica- 
tion were suffered to remain. How naturally do 
these serpentine politics remind one of the re- 
flection of the celebrated M. : '^ J'ai un de- 
gout de Vkistoire, quand je pense que, ce que nous 
faisons anjourd'hui, sera unjour de Vhistoire.'* 

"The Emperor," continued these counsellors, 
" in again ascending the throne to which the 
people had raised him, re-established their most 
sacred rights. He is called to sanction anew by 
institutions (and he has taken the engagement in 
his proclamations to the nation and the army to 
do so) all liberal principles, personal liberty, and 
equality of rights, the freedom of the press, lib- 
erty of worship, the vote of taxes by the commons, 



56 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

national property, the independence of courts of 
justice, and the responsibility of ministers and of 
every agent of the executive power. 

" Such are the principles by which the Council 
of State decides that the nation shall be governed, 
and such the conditions laid on him whom the 
people are said to have called to govern them. 
But," continue these counsellors, " we order, for 
the more effectual preservation of the rights and 
obligations of the people, that the national institu- 
tions be renewed in a great assembly already con- 
voked by the Emperor." 

The council concluded this important delibera- 
tion by intimating, that, ^' until the meeting of 
this great representative assembly, the Emperor 
ought to exercise, conformably to the constitution 
and laws existing, the powers which have been 
delegated to him, which cannot be taken from 
him, which he could not abdicate without the 
consent of the nation, and which the desire and 
general interest of the French people make it his 
duty to resume." 

To give this declaration the greater force, it 
was signed individually by the Council of State, 
who seemed to have become the guarantees of 
Bonaparte's good conduct till the assembly of the 
Field of May, which was to consist of the electors 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 57 

from every department of the empire, the immedi- 
ate representatives of the people in primary 
assemblies, and whose votes were to be regarded 
as their voice. 

Whatever share of credulity may belong to the 
French character, scarcely any party yielded faith 
to the professions of the council or the conversion 
of their chief. Every gift from his hands was 
regarded with distrust. The great mass of the 
citizens of France admitted not the possibility of 
Bonaparte's reformation, and saw nothing but 
slavery in the revival of jacobinism and its junc- 
tion with imperialism. 

The speculative partizans of these different 
opinions formed but an inconsiderable number in 
the mass. The proceedings of the Council of 
State, which were intended to renew the primitive 
spirit of the Revolution, failed entirely. Their 
reversion to past principles was scoffed at by all 
parties, and little heed was given to their charges 
against the Bourbons. It was not considered, by 
candid and liberal minds, as a crime in the royal 
family of France, that, with the feelings common 
to human nature, they indulged a predilection 
for those persons who had followed their destinies 
and shared their misfortunes. Yet it is difficult to 
believe how small was the number of those true 



58 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

followers, "faithful found among the faithless." 
The great mass of emigrants had long preceded 
their sovereign in his entry into France ; they had, 
for the most part, eagerly accepted the amnesty 
of Napoleon, and some of the most illustrious 
names of France had been for years attached to 
his service. 

It was, indeed, lamented that the king, with 
every disposition to diffuse happiness around him, 
sometimes mistook the means, and viewed the 
situation of the country through the medium of 
his ministers, unused to revolutionary politics. A 
free press, it was observed, was equally the safe- 
guard of the prerogative of the crown and the 
rights of the people. The Chart had proclaimed 
this liberty of the press ; but it was explained, 
and as it were nibbled away, by ministerial misin- 
terpretation in the legislative discussion on this 
subject, and was still more reduced in the execu- 
tion. No newspaper was published without the 
imprimatur of a censor named by ministers ; and 
the king was left ignorant of apprehensions and 
abuses which his own good understanding would 
have led him to calm and correct. 

The people in general, while sufficiently indif- 
ferent to the discussion of abstract opinions, were 
extremely tenacious of their property ; and the 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 59 

report of the intended spoliation of what was 
called national property, the re-establishment of 
tythes and the restoration of the former ecclesias- 
tical domains, was a calumny which had been pro- 
pagated by Bonaparte's partizans with more in- 
dustry and effect than any other. More than 
half of the population of France was interested in 
the disposal of the national property, on account 
of the various channels through which it had 
flowed since the first purchasers ; but none would 
have been more deeply affected by such a meas- 
ure than the class of the poor among whom the 
minor domains of the church had been divided. 

In France there is no provision for the poor, 
except by hospitals in large towns, and what are 
called Committees of Beneficence, the sparing 
funds for which arise from the octrois, or taxes on 
provisions, levied at the gates of towns. These 
funds were distributed by the minister of the in- 
terior on the demands of the prefects, but were 
often converted to the uses of the army by Bona- 
parte. Before the Revolution the church had 
distributed these alms, and its ministers had nec- 
essarily acquired considerable influence over the 
numerous class of the poor. On the disposal of 
church-property by the state in the first years of 
the Revolution, that which lay in the vicinity 



60 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

of small towns and villages was divided among 
the poorer inhabitants ; so that each family be- 
came proprietor of half an acre, or an acre, 
whereon to feed a cow or raise vegatables, the 
produce of which land, cultivated by the fxmily 
at leisure hours, bestowed independence, raised 
it above the humiliation of receiving charity, 
and rendered poor's-rates useless. The order of 
the priesthood had lost both its influence and its 
wealth, and, it must be admitted, had sunk be- 
low its due rank in society. The prospect of an 
amelioration under a government the chiefs of 
which were known to possess a deep sentiment 
of piety, had led these long-humbled ecclesiastics 
to the retrospect of more brilliant times; and 
some had imprudently indulged in prognostica- 
tions which had alarmed their flocks with the fear 
of being compelled to render their little pastures 
and gardens. The priest had become the willing 
but innocent agent of this calumny invented by 
the enemies of the Bourbons, whose intentions of 
restoring tythes and church property were widely 
and sedulously extended. The doctrine of tythes 
was proclaimed from some village pulpits, though 
no instance is recorded where such restitutions 
were exacted ; but apprehension had the same 
effect as the actual spoliation, and in the supposed 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 61 

over-weening attachment of the Bourbons to the 
church for which, in fact, all they had done since 
their late accession was to have given an example 
of piety, the peasant was taught to foresee the loss 
of that little cherished spot which he had culti- 
vated with the sweat of his brow, and which he 
regarded with honest pride as the inheritance of 
his family. 

Were the charges brought against the Bour- 
bons minutely examined, they would, for the 
greater part, be found equally devoid of truth 
with that respecting church-lands and tythes. 
These calumnies were, nevertheless, productive of 
serious mischief, as they affected a very numerous 
class of the people who had no leisure for examin- 
ation, and fewer means than any other of being 
undeceived. 

But whatever were the differences of opinion 
with respect to the proposed regeneration of the 
French government, there was a most cordial con- 
currence of sentiment respecting the chief himself. 
Every one beheld Bonaparte smiling, under his 
air of penitence, at the toil and trouble of these 
new constitution-makers, bidding them good speed 
till they had again confirmed him in the posses- 
sion of his throne ; and then like another Samp- 
son whose locks had escaped their sheers, and 



62 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

laughing loud at their credulity, he would prob- 
ably snap at once all the chains of popular sov- 
ereignty, laws, equality, and rights of man, and 
brandishing his imperial eagle would rally his 
troops around him, and perhaps send his Council 
of State to dig his iron mines at Elba. 



LETTER VI. 

May, 1815. 

His Imperial Majesty had scarcely passed his 
probationary week of fraternization at Paris with 
the majesty of the populace, ere he began to shew 
dissatisfaction at the familiar tone of this new ac- 
quaintance, to which, on his conversion, he had 
been introduced by his ministers. He had hitherto 
been hailed with flattering vociferation only by his 
soldiers, who were his immediate dependants, and 
the only part of the people who had thrown up 
their caps were those of the lowest class. When 
they resorted to the Tuileries at the intervals or 
daily close of their labours, they assembled under 
Napoleon's apartments and bawled out loudly for 
his appearance. The Emperor obeyed the sum- 
mons, but wearied with these demonstrations of 
fraternity, and viewing through his spying-glass 
the quality of his greeters, expressed his disgust 
at the impudence of the canaille, ^mcQ he perceived 
that none above that rank had deigned to salute 
him. 

The theatres had commonly been the scenes of 
popular shoutings in the imperial days of former 



64 NAERATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

times, and by the management of the police the 
hired plaudits had been tolerably successful. It 
was however thought too hazardous to resort to 
this expedient in the present circumstances, lest 
indecent opposition or gloomy silence should mar 
the exhibition. But scarcely had a fortnight 
elapsed ere the enthusiasm of the military, as well 
as that of the populace, had entirely vanished. 
The former had learned that instead of full pay, 
and either a twenty years' truce or a summer's 
promenade through Germany, they should be com- 
pelled to march against their rebel countrymen in 
the south or west, or face myriads pouring down 
from the north with no prospect of pay or plun- 
der, and with the chance of being exterminated. 
The populace began now to discover that their 
work-shops were closed, and that these shouts of 
" Long life to the Emperor " were likely to shorten 
their own and that of their families. These allies 
of imperial power and glory began to waver in 
their politics, and meditate on the prospect of 
starving for want of employment, or of fighting 
for interests not their own. 

This dissatisfaction was not unobserved by the 
ministers. It was, however, still necessary to 
keep up the fever of popularity, and the Field of 
May was again brought forward. It was publicly 



NAKRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 65 

announced that the minister of the interior had 
issued his instructions to the prefects of the de- 
partments to prepare the electoral colleges for this 
extraordinary assembly. It was urged by the 
minister that this decree for the convocation was 
an homage rendered to the great and eternal 
principles which constitute civilized states, and 
which, though obscured or stifled by feudal anar- 
chy, had resumed new force and splendour in 
modern times, and whose long duration was in 
future assured by the progress of light and knowl- 
edge. '' It was for these principles," adds the 
minister, " that France raised itself in 1789 ; for 
these that she fought against all Europe ; and 
their acquisition is associated with the unparal- 
leled glory of the French armies. The Emperor ac- 
knowledges those rights of the people obtained by 
a war of twenty-five years, and rejects the maxim 
that the nation is made for the throne, and not 
the throne for the nation." '^ What a sublime and 
glorious spectacle," says the minister, " is that of 
a hero, the idol of a people which had conquered 
Europe, declaring that from them and his soldiers 
he holds his power ; that he will reign only by the 
laws ; and that in concurrence with the deputies 
of the nation he is going, by vigorous and wise 
institutions, to lay the foundation of monarchical 

6 



66 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

power with the independence of a free and en- 
lightened nation ! " 

This prospect of regeneration was hailed with 
no raptures by the departments ; the revolution- 
ary spirit had evaporated • and the greater part 
thought more of preservation, and of defence 
against Bonaparte and his abettors, than of dis- 
cussing first principles and recommencing the 
Revolution. The south of France had continued 
to wear the form of resistance. Marseilles, Val- 
ence, and others had marshalled a small force to 
act under the orders of the Duke of Angouleme ; 
while Bordeaux, Toulouse, and the countries bor- 
dering on the Pyrenees shewed their disaffection 
by remaining in a state of defenceless opposition. 
It may be observed that since the Revolution 
partial insurrections have never succeeded against 
the capital, but have always yielded to seduction 
or terror. Some hopes had been entertained that 
the efforts of the Duchess of Angouleme would 
have been supported by some aid from the allied 
powers. A few regiments, it was asserted, headed 
by an experienced commander, would have rallied 
the whole of the population which remained un- 
certain because they had no point of union. The 
princess herself was the most active of the south- 
ern chiefs ; she had marshalled the inhabitants of 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 67 

Bordeaux, and was always the first in the council 
or the field. 

The Duchess of Angouleme had not been spared 
by the Bonapartists amidst the censures heaped 
upon her family. One of the heaviest charges 
brought against her was the habitual melancholy 
of her disposition ; she was found guilty of having 
no French gaiety in her character. The Parisians 
remembered not that this princess, at an age when 
the heart is already susceptible of deep and last- 
ing impressions, had seen her whole family perish, 
and had herself been led from the gloomy tower 
of her prison into an exile which had lasted 
twenty years ; that on returning to the palace of 
her fathers it was natural that some melancholy 
reflections should darken for her the triumphal 
pomp, and mingle themselves with the exultation 
of her joy. But sadness was not the sole offence 
of the Duchess of Angouleme ; her extreme piety 
was declared to be fitter for a monastery than a 
court; and in the caricatures of the royal family 
which filled the print-shops after their departure 
she was placed on her knees before a prie-dieu, as 
if incapable of all other occupations. But no less 
was the confusion of her adversaries than the tri- 
umph of her adherents, when it was announced in 
Paris that this princess, with that energy which 



68 NAKKATIYE OF EVENTS IN FKANCE. 

in a superior mind is called forth by extraordinary 
situations, had risen from her knees, and invok- 
ing in her heart the aid of heaven had mounted 
on horseback, rid every day through the ranks, 
and displayed a courage worthy of heroic times. 
When Bonaparte sent a considerable detachment 
to march against her, she ordered a general to 
conduct her to the Chateau de la Trompette. The 
general hesitated, assuring her that she would be 
in danger. '^ I do not ask you, sir," said she, " if 
there would be danger, I only order you to con- 
duct me." She rode up to a circle of officers on 
the esplanade, whom she harangued, exhorting 
them to fidelity and the renewal of their oaths 
of allegiance in presence of the enemy. Ob- 
serving their coldness and hesitation, she ex- 
claimed, " I see your fears : you are cowards ; I 
absolve you from your oaths already taken ! " and 
turning her horse, she left them, and immediately 
embarked on board an English frigate. The in- 
habitants of Bordeaux followed her to the sea- 
shore with fond enthusiasm, with lamentations and 
tears. Every one wished to possess something 
that had belonged to her, something for " thoughts 
and remembrances ; " something that might be 
guarded with the same devotion as the votive 
offering of a saint or the relic of a martyr. She 



NARRATIVE OF EYEKTS IN FRANCE. 69 

gave her shawl, her gloves, the feathers of her hat, 
which were cut into shreds and distributed among 
her followers. 

If history has bestowed the tribute of applause 
on Elizabeth at Tilbury-Fort, and on Maria The- 
resa at Buda, a splendid page is also reserved for 
the daughter of Louis XVI. at Bordeaux. 

The royalist party in the western departments 
of La Vendee and Brittany flew to arms, and re- 
mained masters of the country they inhabited, but 
were not in sufficient force to march upon Paris. 
The want of combination rendered all these partial 
attempts unsuccessful ; and the French, expect- 
ing little from intestine divisions, turned their 
eyes with confidence towards the north, and were 
earnest in calculating the march of the allies, from 
whom alone they hoped for their deliverance. 

The courage of the adherents to the royal cause 
was strengthened by the king's proclamations 
from Ghent and the accounts of the preparations 
of the allied armies, which were circulated among 
the public. These papers no sooner arrived in 
Paris than they were copied by ten thousand pens. 
The press also immediately groaned with these 
forbidden sheets, which were printed in defiance 
of all authority, and during the night pasted up in 
the streets in contempt of all danger. 



70 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN'fRANCE. 

The government meanwhile redoubled its efforts 
to raise the public mind to a proper degree of 
elevation, and perceiving that the intelligence 
received of the operations beyond the frontiers 
had effectually belied the fable of the truce of 
twenty years and the arrival of the empress and 
the child, felt that it behoved them to give no 
further countenance to these fictions. They how- 
ever endeavoured to persuade the nation that 
these pretended hostilities were the work only of 
a faction headed by the Bourbons, and that no 
more danger was to be apprehended from their 
efforts than had been felt from those of the first 
emigration. 

The Council of State, in its assembly of the 
12th April, entered profoundly into this matter. 
Bonaparte, at a review in the court of the Tuile- 
ries, had in the vehemence of his harangue to the 
troops declared, that, should the combined powers 
send against him six hundred thousand men, he 
would answer them by two millions. Shortly after, 
a levy of upwards of that number was ordered to 
take place throughout the whole of France, con- 
sisting of every man from the age of twenty to 
sixty. The council, finding it impossible to con- 
ceal from the public what passed beyond the fron- 
tiers, deemed it expedient to avow those impolitic 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 71 

transactions of the Congress, and to answer its 
declaration. 

It was asserted by the French government that 
this declaration, supposed to have been made the 
13th March at Vienna, was apocryphal, and for 
divers reasons could not have emanated from the 
Congress, nor have been really signed by the min- 
isters w^hose names appeared to give it sanction. 

This declaration, known at Paris the preceding 
month, was now published throughout France 
with the commentaries of the council, pronounced 
by them to be a forgery and a fabrication of the 
agents of the Count of Lisle (Louis XYIII.) and 
an incentive to assassination. 

The object of the minister of police, by whom 
this answer was published, was probably to signify 
to the whole of France the determination of the 
Congress respecting Bonaparte ; and this intelli- 
gence could not have been more dexterously or 
generally conveyed. 

After thus establishing the falsehood of the 
declaration of Congress, a recapitulation was made 
of the various points in which the allied powers 
and the Bourbons had violated the treaty made 
with Bonaparte after his retreat to the Isle of 
Elba, and which justified his return to France. 
A comparison was then drawn of the government 



72 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

under the administration of the Bourbons, and of 
its fatal consequences, not forgetting the tythes 
and the national domains, and the free government 
which was soon to take place under the benign 
protection of the laws and the Emperor. This 
thrice-told tale of the wrongs of the Bourbons and 
the rights of Bonaparte, which had already been 
published to satiety, was probably thought by the 
minister a necessary passport for the intelligence 
to the whole of the French nation that the time 
allotted to Bonaparte to withdraw from France 
was expired, and that the allied armies were on 
their march towards the frontiers to enforce obedi- 
ence. This declaration seemed sufficient ; but, 
as if the caprice of confession had seized the gov- 
ernment, it was followed by a report of the min- 
ister of foreign affairs, in which he called the 
Emperor's attention to the real perilous state of 
the country on account of the lawless conduct of 
the sovereigns of Europe, who were now in hos- 
tile array, who had arrested his messengers and 
refused to enter into any communication with 
him ; that equal disrespect had been evinced 
towards the fraternal applications of his Majesty 
to the sovereigns, though he had written to each, 
in his own hand, beginning with the endearing 
appellation of " Monsieur, mon Frere." " Against 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 73 

whom," says the minister, " are those hostilities 
directed ? Sire, it is your Majesty that is named, 
but it is France that is threatened." 

It had been well understood in Paris that Bona- 
parte's presence in France was the sole cause of 
the impending calamities ; but here was the sol- 
emn ministerial confession, published by order of 
the government. The whole fabric of falsehood 
was thus swept away by the hand that had raised 
it. Instead of the twenty years' truce, it was de- 
creed that every citizen should arm in defence of 
the frontiers; and the devastation, if not the sub- 
jugation, of the country superseded all the fairy 
dreams of liberty, equality, and the rights of man. 

Notwithstanding the official revelation of these 
dreadful truths, it was still thought expedient to 
keep up the semblance of concord and popularity 
at the Tuileries, although the council-chamber was 
often the arena of the bitterest contention. Many 
an angry discussion took place, but no one was so 
frequently called to order as the Emperor himself. 
In the heat of debate he sometimes forgot that 
he was not Emperor at home. But the execution 
of his threat of ordering a minister to be shot 
was adjourned by that minister's assurance that 
the Emperor himself would not survive an hour 
after. 



74 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

These controversies in the cabinet of the Tuil- 
eries were not altogether unknown to the Paris- 
ians, and were even sometimes rehearsed before 
the mob hired to cry "Yive I'Empereur!" Ac- 
clamations were at first purchased at the rate 
of fiYe livres a day, but the price was now 
reduced ; no effort of the lungs was paid higher 
than thirty or forty sous, and the enthusiasm of the 
populace diminished in proportion to its current 
value, and even their respect was measured by 
their salary. An animated discussion between 
Bonaparte and his arch-chancellor happening to 
take place at the window of his apartment in the 
Tuileries, the Emperor, accustomed to ill-treat his 
ministers, seized him by the collar. This scene 
was witnessed by the mob, who related to their 
fellows the scuffle between Pere la Yiolette and 
his comrade, in the same manner as they would 
have recounted one of the battles which takes 
place for their amusement between the puppet- 
show actors, on the Boulevards. 



LETTER YII. 

May, 1815. 

The veil is at length withdrawn ; the comedy 
is ended. Bonaparte is no longer the humble 
candidate for public favour, the dependent on the 
protection of his ministers and council, the peni- 
tent convert from the errors of his former despot- 
ism ; he . is once more Napoleon, — " Napoleon, 
by the grace of God and the constitutions of the 
empire," &c. &c. He has fled from the Tuileries 
and intrenched himself at the Palais Bourbon, in 
the Champs-Elysees, surrounded by his faithful 
Sicaires, leaving the ideologues of his council to 
arrange what he calls their revolutionary rub- 
bish, — such as sovereign people, equal rights, &c., 
— with which they were active in forming a free 
constitution. 

Few had been the dupes of Bonaparte's pre- 
tended conversion ; but it was generally supposed 
that the consideration of the perilous situation in 
which he had placed himself might have led him 
to act his part in this comedy of patriotism till he 
was firmly seated on his throne by the assembly 



76 NAKRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

of the Field of May. He miglit then more easily 
seize the occasion of wielding unrestrained his old 
imperial sceptre. 

What appeared most extraordinary to the Pa- 
risians was, not that Bonaparte should have acted 
the hypocrite, that on his landing he should have 
been the first to proclaim equal rights, equal 
laws, — falsehood was known to be a constituent 
part of his character; his remaining a prisoner 
at the Tuileries, obliged to display himself daily 
at his windows and return the salutations of the 
greasy mob who were hired to vociferate " Vive 
I'Empereur ! " and who on the diminution of their 
pay had changed their cry to "Vive le Pere la 
Yiolette ! " seemed unnecessary degradation. This 
humiliation, however, Napoleon might perhaps 
have borne or dissembled ; but to be forced to be 
present at the discussion of the council-chamber 
on the formation of a constitution, to find his 
observations treated with undue irreverence as 
foreign to the object of debate, to aid in forging 
the chains which he was destined to wear, — this 
was beyond all mortal patience. That of Napo- 
leon had long been exhausted, and he tore away 
the mask when the first favourable moment of 
emancipation presented itself. The council had 
decreed; that until the constitution in discussion 



NAKRATIYE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 77 

had received the assent of the electors, the Em- 
peror should exercise his usual authority. Bona- 
parte availed himself of this decree. To be really 
emperor but for a day, an hour, was better than 
an eternity of bondage at the Tuileries. He 
therefore resorted once more to his old maxim of 
daring ; and his imperial Majesty, without taking 
leave, enthroned himself in full power at the pal- 
ace called the Elysee-Bourbon, in the Champs- 
Elysees. Bonaparte lost few of his allies by this 
removal. The soldiers, who had disdained to ap- 
pear with the mob and hail their Emperor while 
he was a prisoner at the Tuileries, accepted the 
fraternization offered at the Champs-Elysees, 
where the emperor returned their greetings at 
his leisure from the gardens of his palace, and 
occasionally sent them a representative, which 
was usually one of his family. 

The difficulties which would have attended the 
formation of a constitution suited for France, were 
at this moment greatly increased by an utter dis- 
cordance in the views and interest of most of the 
persons employed in the fabrication. Those min- 
isters and members of the council, who had been 
accustomed to constitution-making, were of opin- 
ion that the French as a free nation should be 
furnished with a free constitution; that the sov- 



78 NARKATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

ereignty of the people might be exercised on the 
present occasion; and that on the convocation of 
the Field of May the body of electors, as the im- 
mediate representatives of the people, should have 
the power of changing whatever disposition might 
be deemed by them imfavourable, and of adopting 
such measures as they should judge expedient for 
the interest of their country. Various were the 
plans for the organization of this crowd of special 
representatives, amounting to about twenty-five 
thousand electors. It was at length settled that 
committees should be named by the electors from 
their own body, who should propose and discuss 
such changes, and whose reports should be made 
to the mass, distributed into sections, so that the 
opinion of the whole might be almost individually 
obtained. 

But these organizers might have spared them- 
selves the labour of such arrangements. Bona- 
parte had other projects ; and having called to his 
aid a celebrated publicist, gained the start of the 
deliberating council at the Tuileries, and published, 
instead of a constitution, what he styled " An Ad- 
ditional Act to the Constitutions of the Empire," 
dated from the palace of the Elysee the 22d 
April, 1815. 

Bonaparte, notwithstanding the huzzas of the 



NAREATIYE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 79 

military and the mob, now found that not only 
his popularity was on the decline, but that even 
his partizans began to waver. All the hopes of 
those who had fondl}^ imagined that a national 
contract was about to be formed which might 
cement the rights of the people and limit the dif- 
ferent powers, — all these hopes vanished when 
Bonaparte, by the sovereign authority vested in 
him by the constitutions of the empire which he 
declared had been accepted by the people, or- 
dered, for various reasons stated in the preamble, 
that the articles forming an additional Act to 
these aforesaid constitutions, should also be sub- 
mitted to the free and solemn acceptance of the 
citizens throughout the empire. 

Had this string of articles resounded with na- 
tional sovereignty, equality, and rights of man ; 
and had the Act conferred every kind of liberty, 
and made all republican concessions, — the mode 
of its promulgation would too clearly have implied 
that it was merely an imperial mandate, which, 
like all others emanating from the same source, 
could serve only as an instrument to sanction all 
his past and future tricks of despotism. 

The danger of a deliberating mass of twenty to 
thirty thousand citizens was too obvious to escape 
Bonaparte's penetration ; but as it had been de- 



80 NAERATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

creed that the assembly of the Champ de Mars 
should take place, it was impossible to counter- 
mand the meeting ; measures were, however, 
taken to neutralize its effect. The electors were 
to receive no pecuniary compensation for their 
expenses of travelling, or residence in Paris, which 
was a circumstance favourable to Bonaparte, since 
no great number were disposed to undertake the 
journey at their own cost ; and it was intimated to 
those whom patriotic sentiments and the hope of 
co-operating in the establishment of a free consti- 
tution might prompt to such an effort, that, by an 
imperial decree, the electors were not to discuss 
the constitutional Act, and that their services 
would be limited to verifying the registers and 
counting the votes on the day of their meeting in 
the Field of May, which was to be held on the 
26th of that month. 

The operations of the electors were, of course, 
reduced to the service of clerks, since assent or 
disapprobation of the constitutional Act was no 
more their concern. The same decree enacted 
the mode of taking those votes on registers 
opened at the town-houses, at the offices of gov- 
ernment, and at notaries, where the votes w^ere 
inscribed. This mode of voting had its precedent 
in the mockery of Bonaparte's election as em- 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 81 

peror, and it was presumed that the same nefa- 
rious manoeuvres would be resorted to ; but as 
that election was chiefly confined to Paris, where 
not only the boasted four millions of signatures 
but ten millions might have been obtained with 
equal facility by similar means, it was feared that 
the agents of government in the departments 
would construe the title of active citizens in too 
confined a sense, and admit none to vote but such 
as had the civic right. 

To avert the inconvenience that might arise 
from too formal an adherence to the letter of the 
decree, and lest those in office might harbour some 
lurking attachment to the cause of the Bourbons 
or retain some anti-imperial prejudices, it was 
ordered by Bonaparte that certain good and trusty 
commissaries should be sent into each military 
division to expel from office all mayors, municipal 
officers, members of general councils of depart- 
ments, sub-prefects, and others bearing authority, 
and name other sound and trusty men in their 
place. 

These commissaries sped away from Paris to 
execute their revolutionary orders, and raised the 
spirit of the departments to a proper sense of the 
new imperial condescension of submitting any 
act whatever to their consideration or choice. 

6 



82 IS'AERATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

This mode of enlightening the departments was 
judged the more expedient, as the constitutional 
Act emanated from the Elysee palace had under- 
gone the sarcasms and reproach of all classes at 
Paris. The Jacobins, who had triumphed in im- 
perial conversion, and who attributed this patri- 
otic change to the conviction of the truth of their 
system, now lavished on Bonaparte all the dis- 
graceful and ill-sounding epithets which filled the 
pages of their vocabulary. The republican party 
had given very little credit to any conversion 
whatever ; they had felt that the sacrifice to prin- 
ciple would be great in placing Bonaparte as chief 
of the executive power, although bound by fetters 
which they hoped to rivet on him ; but they had 
believed that in the present crisis of his fate he 
might be led to risk some portion of his power to 
ensure the rest,, and that he might, in the perilous 
circumstances in which he was placed, suffer his 
interest to outweigh his vanity. 

The royalists alone felt a species of triumph at 
this patriotic disappointment. Their hopes were 
fixed on the frontiers ; and they concluded that 
this rage for constitution-making would be abated 
by the same means that would reconcile many 
other differences. All classes, however discord- 
ant in every other opinion, were now in unison on 



NARKATIYE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 83 

one point, — that Bonaparte was the most daring 
of impostors. All were unprepared for this state- 
mockery, and it filled their minds with uncontrol- 
lable indignation. Was it not enough, said they, 
to delude us with the tale of a twenty years' 
truce and the arrival of his wife and child, as 
proofs of his new alliance with one of the most 
formidable of our enemies ; was it not enough that 
he has brought war and devastation upon us by a 
second invasion of all the powers of Europe, who 
will not fail to pour on us all the stores of their 
vengeance, and punish us as slaves in revolt ? 
Could he even frame an excuse or justification of 
these falsehoods, and plead that he had deceived 
us because he had been himself deceived, this de- 
ception at least which he now practises is an act of 
his own will. He had adopted principles which are 
recognized by the nation ; he assented to a consti- 
tution framed on those principles, and for the 
formation of which he convoked the country in 
the persons of its immediate representatives to 
discuss and sanction what should be proposed by 
his ministers and council ; and then, after declar- 
ing that the people had approved the various acts 
of despotism which he and the senate had promul- 
gated at different periods of his tyranny, he enacts, 



84 NARKATIYE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

of his own authority, another constitution, which 
he calls on the nation to fall down and worship. 

These murmurs were so general that the Em- 
peror thought them entitled to some notice ; find- 
ing a spirit of resistance arising against this second 
treachery, he deemed it proper to allege some- 
thing in his defence. This defence consisted 
chiefly in recrimination. Bonaparte's despotism 
had been founded on the knowledge he had of 
the national character, of which the leading fea- 
ture is vanity, and which had been flattered by 
the appellation of the Great Nation, which was the 
result of his military achievements. He now 
reproached them with their abject meanness by 
which they had received a constitution without a 
murmur ; which the king had octroyed to them as a 
boon ; which he had sent to the municipalities, not 
to be accepted, but obeyed, and in the preamble 
of which he declared himself to be in full posses- 
sion of the authority emanated from God and 
from his ancestors. Bonaparte compared the 
French of the present day to the serfs who were 
freed by one of their former monarchs, Louis le 
Gros. 

Bonaparte had forgotten, that, although his 
own senatus consul ta had not been " octroyed " 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 85 

but accepted by the people, they had, in reality, 
as little to do in their formation as the senate 
itself, who simply registered the imperial dictate, 
and often bore with impatience the indignities to 
which they were compelled to submit. 



LETTER VIII. 

Jui^, 1815. 

It has been said by the moralist, '^ Never be 
such a fool as to be a knave ; " but the policy 
of Napoleon soared far beyond the trite and vul- 
gar maxims of moral conduct. His principles 
respecting government, and his own actions, 
whether public or private, were regulated by no 
other views than those of his own immediate 
interests. He had chosen Machiavel for his guide, 
and applied the politics, maxims, and practices of 
the Italian states to our own enlightened times, 
and to France, which, having subdued, he at- 
tempted to make his instrument of the subjection 
of Europe. 

His previous studies had led him to believe that 
not only the territory of France was his property, 
but its inhabitants also ; he spoke often, with the 
triumph of a wealthy prodigal, of his ability of 
spending twenty and thirty thousand men each 
month, and made no more account of this sort of 
expenditure than of the millions of gold and silver 
which he exacted and lavished. His most ardent 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 87 

ambition was that of living in history, provided 
that it was not such a writer as Tacitus who should 
convey his name to posterity, and for whom he 
affected the most profound contempt. In a dis- 
cussion with the historic class of the Institute, he 
asserted that Tacitus was the most partial, mis- 
informed, and ill-advised of all historians ; and that 
he had libelled a model of wisdom among the 
Roman emperors, — Tiberius, of whose policy in 
government he had not the sagacity to form a 
just opinion. The Institute was compelled to 
leave Tacitus to defend himself, and Tiberius to 
the honours of his new reputation. 

Bonaparte had signalized himself as a warrior, 
but he did not too highly deem of descending to 
posterity with military fame alone. He had ob- 
served that nothing of the most celebrated de- 
stroyers of mankind, called warriors, exists but 
their names, while its great institutors are not 
merely held in remembrance, but continue to live 
in their disciples (all that remained of Alexander, 
of Caasar, of Charles XII. was their names ; but 
the laws instituted more than four thousand years 
since by Moses, were yet obeyed throughout the 
world by the numerous and disseminated posterity 
of his race) ; — that Zoroaster and Mahomet had 
subdued by their principles a great portion of the 



88 NARRATIVE OF EVEIS^TS IIS" FRANCE. 

earth, and that their names are still invoked with 
veneration by innumerable followers, while the 
heroes of Greece and Rome fade on the memory ; 
that, in modern times, Luther and Calvin had 
given their names to the most enlightened portion 
of the people of Europe ; and that he also. Napo- 
leon the Great, by seizing some favourable epocha 
for a new kind of warfare against all that he called 
superstition, might become the founder of some 
other system of faith, and assume the honours of 
a teacher or a prophet. Bonaparte had not only 
meditated on this subject, but had made reforma- 
tion the secret order of the day in a committee 
of his Council of State. Without having plunged 
deeply into religious controversy, or having pro- 
bably carried his studies beyond the lucubrations 
of modern infidelity, he had the sagacity to dis- 
cern that the prevalent religion of his empire held 
little relation with the primitive doctrines of Chris- 
tianity, and that the state of knowledge in France 
was such that reformation would be welcomed. 
Orders were given at the literary police to permit 
the publication of all works against popery; and 
coercive measures were in meditation against the 
person of the Pope, who had resisted his anti- 
canonical measures respecting the institution of 
bishops. This was a power which interfered too 



N'ARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 89 

much with his own, and he wished to annex the 
title of Head of the Church to that of Emperor of 
the French. 

Bonaparte had distinguished himself at all 
times for his principles of toleration, which bene- 
fited only the dissenters from the Catholic church. 
These were favoured ; while the episcopal chiefs 
of the church avoided any open hostilities only by 
becoming the instruments of his edicts of conscrip- 
tion or flatterers of his power. Their charges, or 
mandemenSy to the clergy and people of their dio- 
ceses, were filled with scriptural allusions to Cyrus ; 
and one bishop so far forgot his allegiance to the 
Pope as to name Bonaparte the representative of 
God on earth. The clergy of inferior rank, whose 
salaries were by no means adequate to their ser- 
vices, or who had clearer views of Bonaparte's 
ultimate designs, were unwilling to compliment 
away their faith, and made scriptural allusions, in 
their turn, in answer to the mandemens of their 
bishops. 

History teaches us that arbitrary power and the 
sword are not always unfitted to promote a reform 
of ancient errors. Mahomet proposed the great 
doctrine of the Unity of the Divine Being, and 
purified the Christian, and what remained of 
the heathen, world of its polytheistic and idola- 



90 . NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

trous abuses ; and Henry YIII. shook off with 
violence the chains of the papal government. Of 
these two creeds a warlike nation of the east, the 
Mahometan Wechabites, appear to have under- 
taken a further reform. The papal superstition 
would not, perhaps, have survived Bonaparte's 
examination. He had found too many points of 
opposition in the tenets of this church to fashion 
it to his rule of government, and bring it within 
the pale of his system of unity. He had, indeed, 
observed in Egypt the policy of ancient Rome in 
adopting the religion of the conquered country. 
" Grlory to Allah ! " says he to the chief priests of 
Cairo. '^ There is no other God but God ; Maho- 
met is his prophet, and I am his friend. The 
divine Koran is the delight of my soul and the 
object of my meditation." A discussion which he 
held with those eastern doctors led to some doubts 
respecting the strength of faith in their proselyte. 
Bonaparte would not admit that the magnetical 
needle, the invention of gunpowder, the art of 
printing, or the Newtonian system of the universe 
were to be found in the Koran. But whatever 
might be the doctrines which Bonaparte would 
have instituted, and for the belief of which all 
latitude would have been given, the discipline of 
his church would no doubt have been military. 



NARKATIYE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 91 

He had already rendered the instruction at the 
Lyceums, and even private schools, as soldier-like 
as the nature of the lessons permitted, and every 
movement was ordered by beat of drum. A right 
reverend bench of generals, well organized staffs of 
deans and vicars, and a handsomely drilled clergy, 
with their acolytes, would, in his estimation, have 
given energy to the church-militant. As a seden- 
tary guard, or militia, they would have replaced 
, the regular troops stationed in the interior, and 
with which he could have augmented his ranks 
for foreign service. The teachers of virtue might 
thus have become the quellers of sedition, and 
their eloquent discourses against immorality be 
accompanied, if necessary, by the stronger argu- 
ments of military persuasion. As his system had 
been that of fusion in his secular concerns, so he 
would have followed the same rule in his eccle- 
siastical administration, and this he would have 
called toleration. He had not been able, however, 
to bring the Pope, when in Paris, into union with 
the President of the Protestant church, M. Marron, 
whom he usually addressed at court by the title of 
"Monsieur le Pape Protestant." Pius Yll. de- 
clared, with some pleasantry, that he had no 
hopes '^ de tirer le Maron du feu." But Napo- 
leon effected what was no less difficult, that of 



92 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

engaging the Cardinal Archbishop of Paris and the 
Protestant president to join in the same religious 
ceremony, in the presence of the empress and 
part of the court. It was the celebration of the 
marriage of a Catholic and a Protestant person of 
the court ; and the man being a Protestant^ the 
Protestant president, in right of the husband's 
prerogative, took the lead in the ceremony, and 
was seated in the place of honour at the right 
hand of the empress, at the nuptial banquet, and 
the cardinal w^as placed on the left. 

It is soothing to observe that toleration in 
France is not confined to courts, much less did it 
belong exclusively to his reign, who, in his com- 
plete indifference for all religion, was a Mussul- 
man at Cairo and a Catholic at Paris. Louis 
XVIII., while he adheres with steadfast attach- 
ment to that religion in which he so long found 
the solace of his misfortunes, and of which the con- 
solations blunt the thorns that surround his dia- 
dem, — Louis XVIII. has never violated the sacred 
principle of toleration. In testimony of the truth 
of this assertion, I shall mention the circumstances 
which took place last winter at an interment some 
leagues distant from Paris, and at which the 
President of the Protestant church was invited 
to officiate. The defunct was a titled English 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 93 

Protestant. The bishop of the diocese had ordered 
that all due honours should be rendered to the piety 
and good works of the deceased. The funeral 
sermon was preached by the Protestant president 
in the pulpit of a Catholic church, to a numerous 
Catholic auditory, the Catholic clergy attending 
the service. The corpse was laid in the tomb 
with mingled rites, — the lighted tapers and the 
Catholic dirge, the prayers of the Genevan church 
and the tears of the mourning peasantry. You 
have heard of the object of this blended ceremo- 
nial. She was an English lady of some renown 
about the middle of the last century. Her mis- 
fortunes and errors (for which the tears that were 
shed by the poor over her grave are a proof she 
had atoned) have been recorded by the celebrated 
Junius under the name of Miss Ann, or Nancy 
Parsons. 

Bonaparte was well read in the history of the 
doubtful authority and genealogy of the papal 
doctrine ; and a counsellor of state, whom he had 
entrusted with the project, told me that the 
Emperor was persuaded that the doctors of the 
Galilean church would be flexible enough ^ to 

1 The decrees which he enforced with the most unrelent- 
ing severity were those of the conscription. Strict obedience 
to this murderous mandate was enjoined in the pastoral 



94 NAERATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

swell the number of their four articles of dissent 
from papal pretension. Having found that the Pope 
had become less complaisant than when he was 
his guest at the Tuileries, he began the execution 
of his design by putting the Holy Father in dur- 
ance, and constituting him prisoner in one of the 
French departments. The intervention of some 
pressing business, either the projected invasion of 
England or a predatory expedition on the conti- 
nent, and which required his presence, interrupted 
the plan of being the instructor of mankind, and 
he reassumed his ordinary occupation of being its 
scourge. In this career he had, at that period, 
much yet to perform. A new religion could be 
established, when he thought proper, by a senatus 
consultus ; and in the mean time he had sacrifices 

letters of bishops to their dioceses. A certain archbishop 
enforced his argument in favour of this depopulating decree 
by asserting that Jesus Christ had submitted himself to the 
conscription. It was thus that the K-everend Father in God 
translated, by the word conscription, the inscription, or 
taxation, which took place by order of Augustus when 
Cyrenius was Governor of Syria, and " when Joseph went 
up to Bethlehem, with Mary, to be taxed, being great with 
child." This prelate's zeal for his majesty's service would 
have enlarged the conscription to females and infants yet 
unborn, while the French emperor's mandate went no 
farther than the male sex, and those at the age of eighteen, 
when they were inhumanly called chair a caoion, — ' ' food for 
powder." 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 95 

to make to his household gods of the family of 
Teutates. But leaving him to accomplish his 
great resolve, — 

^^ On Moscow's towers let Gallic standards fly, 
And all be mine beneath the polar sky," — 

let us return to the sketch of his later adventures. 
It was now clearly understood that the loan of 
a new constitution must be repaid by the sacrifice 
of the lives and fortunes of all the citizens of 
France. But as few of this number admitted the 
value of this loan, or were disposed to make the 
return exacted, Bonaparte had not been negligent 
in seeking aid from without. Considerable expecta- 
tions were raised on the diversion to be made by 
his brother, the King of Naples, who, under pre- 
tence of giving independence and freedom to 
Italy, had marched a very numerous and well 
appointed army to the northern states of that pen- 
insula, which, in the congressional repartition of 
European souls, had been attached to the House 
of Austria. It was no doubt generous in this 
king, at the time when the other princes of 
Europe were carving out countries for themselves 
and each other, to volunteer his services in the 
obsolete cause of the rights of man and of the 
independence of nations. He had succeeded in 



96 iN'ARKATIYE OF EVENTS I:N' FRANCE. 

sending the Pope again on his travels, to the great 
satisfaction of the Romans; but not satisfied with 
this easy conquest, when Murat attempted to 
cope with the Austrian armies, which in their 
march towards France had stopped to reconnoitre 
his proceedings, he was vanquished in several 
successive engagements, compelled to seek his 
safety in flight, and learnt, on his arrival on the 
French shore, that his kingdom was departed 
from him. 

The loss or gain of a crown in this age of revo- 
lutions excites no great interest, except with the 
gaining or losing parties. This incident was not, 
however, unimportant to Europe, since it procured 
a very considerable additional force to the cause of 
the allied armies. Murat was naturally regarded 
by the august members of the European family as 
unworthy of his station, and fit only to be cast 
out; while Bonaparte considered him as guilty 
because he had been unfortunate, although Murat, 
who had lost his crown by listening to his seduc- 
tions, might well have answered, — 

'Taults I may have to Heaven, but none to thee.'' 

Murat had borne his faculties at Naples as 
meekly as could have been expected from the 
possessor of a throne so equivocal. He had 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 97 

obtained the good opinion of the country in gen- 
eral, whose well-being he seemed to have at 
heart, and which he had in various instances 
effected. It was hoped that this part of Europe, 
which had been stained with no ordinary crimes 
under its old masters, might regain its former 
prosperity under a milder administration, and 
that the multiplied depredations made on the 
property of the noble and the rich might be, in 
a great measure, retrieved. 

All this was promised by the king, and was 
believed by those who had suffered most under 
Sicilian and Bonapartean rulers. The Neapoli- 
tans were not reserved in the expression of their 
satisfaction, and appeared to dread no inter- 
ruption of their tranquillity but such as might 
arise from the arbiters of the fate of nations at the 
Congress; though they hoped that the conduct 
of Murat in the great campaign of Europe, 1814, 
and the treaties formed with him by the leading 
powers, would determine that sovereign body to 
treat him with favour. 

But while the Neapolitans, many of whom are 
personally known to me, were expressing their 
apprehensions respecting the final decisions of 
the Congress, there was an enemy almost at their 
gates, who, in the vast overthrow of crowned 

7 



98 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

heads which he was planning in his little island, 
had comprehended that of the King of Naples. 
Though Murat might have made a tolerably 
decent kind of king, he was endowed with no 
extraordinary intelligence. He had indeed pre- 
pared for defence, if he were attacked ; his army 
was respectable, and might have contributed to 
the preservation of his sovereignty had he con- 
tinued to act the part which he adopted the last 
year, and joined his forces with the rest of Europe 
against its common disturber. But in evil hour he 
listened to the wily seducer, who, meditating his 
march from his place of exile to Paris, persuaded 
this foolish king that the active employment of 
his troops against their common enemies was the 
most effectual method of not only securing the 
possession of his own crown, but of rendering 
Italy independent. Murat's expedition against 
the Austrians ended as might reasonably be sup- 
posed against forces so superior. The liberties 
and independence of Italy were not to be assured 
by measures so inadequate. The Italians were 
too wary to confide their destinies to a general 
like Murat, or to such a protector of national 
independence as Bonaparte. 

All hopes of external alliance had now van- 
ished ; and Austria, instead of coming to Napo- 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 99 

leon's aid as he had pretended, having crushed 
his brother-in-law who was active in his cause, he 
was left to his own resources and to his allies the 
military, and the sansenlotterie or canaille of Paris. 
Since the appearance of his Constitutions, the 
fervour of this last body of active citizens had, 
however, been considerably abated. Some, who 
considered him as an apostate from the faith, were 
become very lukewarm in their alhance ; others, 
as the subsidies had ceased, misspent their time 
no lonc^er in vociferation. This turbulent class 
did not return to their accustomed labour, for all 
workshops were shut up, as all commerce was at 
an end. Their residence in Paris was dangerous, 
and required the strict surveillance of the national 
guard. A few were engaged by the government 
to work at the fortifications round Paris, and 
others engaged themselves as members of the 
Corps Francs to guard the country round the 
metropolis. 

The Corps Francs were organized bands of 
volunteers, hired by some chief commissioned by 
the police. They had been instituted in the last 
campaign to protect the rural communes of the 
departments round Paris from pillage by the 
scattered Russian Cossacks. The daily papers 
were filled with doleful accounts of depredation 



100 KARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN" FRANCE. 

and violence committed by these northern bar- 
barians. All the horrors of war were poured on 
the inhabitants, and files of municipal certificates 
were published, with the intention of rousing the 
citizens of Paris to resistance, lest such also should 
be their fate. 

This part of the business was ill managed, for it 
was proved that no Kussian Cossacks had entered 
these departments ; and that all these horrors had 
been committed by the volunteers of the Corps 
Francs, or, as they were called, the Cossacks of 
the Fauxbourgs St. Antoine and St. Marceau, who 
had assumed the costume of the Russian Cossacks. 
In a village on the Marne, near Meaux, in the 
direction of which the allied armies were expected, 
a Russian general — Rusky Musky, or by some 
such name was he called — had given orders to 
his little advanced army of Cossacks to levy con- 
tributions, and take with them the furniture of 
the houses in which he had fixed his quarters. 
Intelligence of this was conveyed to the proprietor 
of a villa, and who was a colonel stationed with 
his regiment of regular troops at Meaux. He 
advanced privately to reconnoitre the enemy ; he 
admired the dexterity with which he saw his 
property packed up and placed on Russian con- 
veyances. He brought up his regiment, sur- 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 101 

rounded his house, and made General Rusky 
Musky and all his troops prisoners of war. Soon 
after, each man of this little Russian army was 
strung up by the neck on the trees which formed 
the avenue leading to his house. The general 
was convicted of being the upholsterer in the 
Fauxbourg St. Antoine, who had furnished the 
house the preceding year, and his army was com- 
posed of the workmen of that quarter of Paris. 

Such were part of the measures then taken 
by Bonaparte's police to excite the country and 
Paris to useless resistance against the invading 
armies. The Cossacks of the north were less 
dreaded than the Cossacks of Paris. The former, 
though authorized plunderers, were often found 
capable of lenient measures, and sometimes even 
of sentiment, — a proof of which took place in 
the environs of Fontainebleau, with which I shall 
close this rambling letter. 

A Polish regiment, forming part of the ad- 
vanced guard of the Russian army, after expelling 
the French from Troyes, marched upon Fontaine- 
bleau. The troops were foraging in a neighbour- 
ing village, and were about to commit disorders, 
which would have caused considerable loss to the 
proprietors without benefit to themselves, — such 
as piercing the banks, or forcing the sluices of 



102 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

some fish-ponds. While they were thus em- 
ployed, and their officers looking on, they were 
astonished to hear the word of command bidding 
them to cease, pronounced in their own language, 
by a person in the dress of the upper class of 
peasants. They ceased their attempt at further 
spoliation, and drew near the stranger. He rep- 
resented to the troops the useless mischief they 
were about to commit, and ordered them to with- 
draw. The officers coming up were lectured in 
their turn, and heard with the same astonishment 
the laws of predatory warfare explained to them. 
"" When I had a command in the army of which 
your regiment is a part, I punished very severely 
such acts as you seem to authorize by your pres- 
ence ; and it is not on those soldiers but on you 
that punishment would have fallen." To be thus 
tutored by a French farmer, in their own lan- 
guage, in such circumstances and in such terms, 
was almost past endurance. They beheld the 
peasants at the same time taking off their hats 
and surrounding the speaker, as if to protect him 
in case of violence ; while the oldest among their 
own soldiers, anxiously gazing on the features of 
the stranger, were seized with a kind of invol- 
untary trembling. Conjured more peremptorily, 
though respectfully, to disclose his quality and 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 103 

his name, the peasant, drawing his hand across 
his eyes to wipe off a starting tear, exclaimed, 
with a half stifled voice, ^^ I am Kosciusko ! " 

The movement was electric. The soldiers 
threw down their arms, and falling prostrate on 
the ground, according to the custom of their 
country, covered their heads with sand. It was 
the prostration of the heart. On Kosciusko's 
return to his house in the neighbourhood of this 
scene, he found a Russian military post established 
to protect it. 

The Emperor Alexander, having learnt from M. 
de la Harpe that Kosciusko resided in the coun- 
try, ordered for him a guard of honour, and the 
country around his dwelling escaped all plunder 
and contribution. 

Kosciusko had withdrawn some years since from 
the guilty world of Bonaparte to cultivate a little 
farm, rejecting every offer which was made him 
by Napoleon, who had learnt to appreciate his 
worth. Kosciusko knew him well. I called on 
him one day to bid him farewell, having read in 
the official paper of the morning his address to 
the Poles on the subject of recovering their free- 
dom, being named to the command of the Polish 
army by Bonaparte. Kosciusko heard me with a 
smile at my credulity ; but on my shewing him 



104 NARKATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

the address with his signature, he exclaimed, 
'' This is all a forgery. Bonaparte knew me too 
well to insult me with any offer in this predatory 
expedition ; he has adopted this mode, which I 
can neither answer nor resent, and which he at- 
tempts to colour with the pretext of liberty. His 
notions and mine respecting Poland are at as 
great a distance as our sentiments on every other 
subject." 



LETTER IX. 

June, 1815. 

Bonaparte, on the failure of his ally Murat. 
was now left to his own resources. Although he 
was proclaimed EmjDeror of the French by the 
complaisance of his Council of State, and for 
which he had played so foully, he felt that his 
title even was precarious till it was confirmed by 
the assembled nation in the Field of May. It is 
not easy to conceive what could have engaged 
him to revive the remembrance of this feudal 
assembly of ancient French history, where the 
monarch met to deliberate with the great vassals 
of the crown and the dignified clergy, on the 
urgent concerns of the state. 

At those early epochas, the Field of May might, 
with great propriety, be called the assembly of 
the nation ; for as the property of the lands in the 
kingdom was almost wholly in the hands of those 
great personages who were called together on 
these occasions, they might be said to represent 
the nation ; the rest, except a few small proprie- 
tors and inhabitants of towns, being composed of 



106 NARRATIVE OF EYENTS IN" FRANCE. 

serfs attached to the soil. Bonaparte knew, how- 
ever, that this denomination of the Field of May 
was calculated to please his subjects by awakening 
their curiosity. " What is the Field of May ? " 
exclaimed the Parisians : at once something an- 
tique and something new ; where much was to be 
done for their liberties, and, what was not indiffer- 
ent, an unknown ceremonial would be performed 
for their amusement. It may be observed, that 
one effect of twenty-five years' of revolution is to 
have given the French such restless habits that 
they require continually something new or 
strange to occupy their minds and fill up the void 
of ordinary life. When it " keeps the noiseless 
tenour of its way," it appears to them a dull dead 
calm, in which the mind becomes stagnant. It 
was much in favour of Bonaparte, that, during 
his reign, he had always something new to pre- 
sent for the entertainment of the Parisians, — the 
bulletin of a battle, a victory, the entry into the 
great capitals of the north ; something, as Bayes 
expresses it, to " surprize and elevate." The calm 
tranquillity which had prevailed during the ten 
months that Louis XVIII. had held the sceptre, 
although brightening into hope and promising 
prosperity, might indeed be called happy, but 
was felt to be dull. In short, all Paris flocked 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 107 

in multitudes to see what was to be seen at the 
Field of May. 

The Field of May having been recorded in his- 
tory as a day of national meeting, the French 
were at least acquainted with the name ; but as 
the invitation was now given to such as in former 
times would have been regarded as slaves and 
serfs, Bonaparte had explained the nature of the 
business by decreeing from Lyons that it was to 
be held for the formation of a free constitution, 
on the basis of the original principles of the 
Kevolution. 

The electors, who had hastened from the de- 
partments to Paris to be present at this great so- 
lemnity towards the end of the month, found that 
this Field of May was delayed till June ; and also 
that their high destination of framing constitutions 
had been converted into an affair of arithmetic, 
and that all that was required of them was suffi- 
cient skill in addition to cast up the votes of their 
constituents. Bonaparte had spared them all 
other patriotic labours, by enacting himself the 
constitution which he deemed the best fitted for 
them to obey. 

The greater number therefore of the electors, 
finding that no discussions or changes were to be 
admitted, and that they were themselves objects 



108 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

of imperial contempt, unwilling to become the 
tame witnesses of this idle pageantry, returned 
indignantly to their homes, without waiting the 
holding of this mock assembly. Some less occu- 
pied, or more curious, forming about a tenth part 
of the whole body of the electors convoked, whiled 
away their time at Paris till the day appointed for 
the assembly, which was held the beginning of 
June. 

A spacious temporary amphitheatre had been 
erected for this purpose in the Champ de Mars, 
connected with the fagade of the Military School, 
and containing about fifteen thousand persons, 
seated and covered by an awning; these were 
the electors and the military deputations. The 
sloping banks which arise round the Champ de 
Mars were crowded with people, and its immense 
plain was filled with cavalry. Here an altar was 
placed, opposite the throne, which was erected 
within the amphitheatre. An assembly, com- 
posed of the electors remaining at Paris, had been 
held the day preceding that of the Champ de 
Mai, to hear the result of the registers for and 
against Napoleon's Additional Act ; the votes 
were already enumerated by the clerks of the 
minister of the interior, and the only co-operation 
of the electors, and by which a judgment may be 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 109 

formed of their quality, was that of loud accla- 
mations each time the ministerial president's 
secretary declared the number of votes from a 
department in favour of Napoleon. He had al- 
ways boasted that he had been elected emperor 
by above four millions of votes. The truth of this 
assertion was never ascertained ; but whatever 
the numbers were, the measures taken to procure 
them vitiated the whole ; not only as the validity 
of the votes was not scrutinized, but as the only 
qualification requisite was that of being suffi- 
ciently learned to write a name, which, whether 
real or fictitious, was of no import, since it was 
not examined. 

As there was therefore no scrutiny, and the in- 
terest of the register-holder was to procure the 
greatest number of votes possible, the voting for 
the constitution was as defective as that for the 
emperorship. Although much manoeuvring was 
exercised by Bonaparte's special agents in the 
departments, such as changing the constituted 
authorities, — mayors, sub-prefects, and others 
whose opinions were not sufficiently pronounced 
in favour of Napoleon's constitution, or who might 
have qualmish feelings respecting their oath to the 
Constitutional Chart of Louis XVIII., — the num- 
ber of votes declared at the assembly amounted 



110 NAREATIVE OF EVENTS IK FKANCE. 

only to one-fourth of the number that had been 
announced for the title of emperor. As this im- 
perial edict, called Additional Act to the constitu- 
tion already existing, was deemed to be accepted, 
the Emperor, in his speech from the throne, as- 
sured the audience — which was of a very mixed 
quality, from the absence of many electors and 
the necessity of filling the amphitheatre — that, 
as " emperor, consul, and soldier, he held all 
from the people ; and, like the king of Athens, 
would sacrifice himself for his country." A much 
less sacrifice was required by the oracle which had 
pronounced on his fate at Vienna than from the 
king of Athens, whose patriotic sacrifice he was in 
no humour to imitate. 

Napoleon arrived at the Champ de Mars at 
one o'clock, accompanied by his three brothers, 
Joseph, Lucien, and Jerome. These principal 
performers in this pageant appeared upon the 
foreground of the piece, detached from the sur- 
rounding figures by their Roman costumes, — the 
tunic, over which was flung the large manteau, 
falling in ample folds. The ceremony began with 
high mass, after which followed a speech from the 
deputy appointed to harangue the Emperor, and 
which he pronounced standing on one of the steps of 
the throne. Then came the declaration of the arch- 



NAERATIYE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. Ill 

chancellor, that the new chart was accepted by an 
almost unanimity of votes. This was succeeded 
by a discourse of the Emperor, after which he 
signed the Additional Act, to which he swore, 
upon the Evangelists, to adhere. It may be 
observed that Napoleon kept on his hat during 
the whole solemnity, before the assembled repre- 
sentatives of the nation, whose heads were un- 
covered, and even when he took the oath, as if 
to shew a sort of defiance of earth and of heaven. 
But in all probability it was from prudence that 
he kept on his hat, which was always lined with 
steel and fitted to guard his head from danger. 
For the rest of his body he had nothing to fear, 
being always wrapped in a coat of mail. After 
having taken the oath. Napoleon descended from 
his throne, threw aside his manteau, and advanc- 
ing towards the middle of the Champ de Mars, 
distributed his eagles to the troops of the line and 
the national guard as they passed before him, 
and swore to defend their colours. The air was 
then filled with the sounds ten thousand times 
repeated, of " Vous jurez,'' and " Nous jurons ! " 
The ceremony being ended, the people returned 
to their homes, having found out what was meant 
by the Field of May ; but somewhat discontented 
that the most diverting parts of the spectacle — 



112 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

the splendid firework they had been promised in 
the evening, representing the Isle of Elba, and 
many other curious and astonishing things — were 
deferred till the following Sunday, when the 
Emperor was to go in state to the hall of the 
legislative body, and to open their sittings by a 
speech from the throne. 

Thus ended the assembly of the Field of May, 
which had been contrived in order to deceive the 
nation, — a purpose that was altogether unful- 
filled, since nobody was deceived. Some friends 
of Bonaparte, or rather friends of their country, 
had, indeed, in privy councils, whispered in his ear 
that he might convert the pageantry of the Field 
of May into a scene of real glory ; that he had an 
act of noble magnanimity to perform, — and this 
was to sign voluntarily, in the presence of the 
assembled empire, his own abdication. He was 
reminded that all Europe was at his frontiers ; 
that its tremendous coalition might be at first 
resisted, but must eventually subdue ; and that 
his crown and person would be the price of peace. 
He was called upon by every motive that could 
be urged to do what, in truth, was only an act 
of prudent foresight, but which all present and 
future times would applaud as the generous re- 
solve of a great and lofty spirit. He had but to 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 113 

declare, that, seeing he was made the pretext of 
the cruel invasion with which France was men- 
aced, he relinquished the empire he had regained, 
and withdrew, in the hope of being followed by 
the good wishes of the nation and perhaps of 
deserving its applause. 

Had Bonaparte been capable of such voluntary 
descent, this would indeed have proved for him a 
proud day of new and virtuous renown. The 
merit of the sacrifice would have been admitted 
to be proportionate to its greatness ; and amidst 
all the horrors of his devastating ambition, this 
last scene of his public existence would have 
shone like a track of unsullied light along a dark 
and stormy horizon. 

But to return. On the Sunday which followed 
the ceremony of the Field of May, the Emperor 
went in his state-carriage, attended by the ladies 
of his dynasty, and preceded and followed by his 
numerous guards, in high military pomp, to instal 
the legislature. He made his speech, in which 
he talked of independence, the rights of the 
people, the liberty of the press, and withdrew. 

The evening of this day closed with illumi- 
nations and the expected pyrotechnic exhibition, 
which represented Bonaparte in a ship, landing 
from the Isle of Elba on the shores of Provence, 

8 



114 NAERATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

and about to re-conquer France. The firework 
was one of the best-acted scenes in this great 
comedy ; it amused the Parisians, which " is whafei^. 
they most seek " in revolutions. The mob cried, ' 
"Long live the Emperor and fireworks!" and 
the reign of the Constitutional Monarchy began. 

Meanwhile, the more reflecting citizens of Paris 
mourned over the evils which menaced their 
unhappy country. The armies of Europe already 
begirted its frontiers, and the miseries of civil war 
desolated its western coasts. Napoleon, however 
reluctant to depart, saw the necessity of joining 
his army, and only waited to receive the address 
of the legislature in answer to his imperial speech 
at the opening of the session. The framing of 
this answer presented so many difficulties, so 
many apprehensions of saying too little or too 
much, that new models were formed and rejected 
during several days, before a choice was made. 

The first act of the Chamber of Representatives 
was the nomination of M. Lanjuinais as president. 
This choice looked like independence, since they 
could scarcely have made an election less agree- 
able to Napoleon. M. Lanjuinais, during his 
perilous revolutionary career, had acquired the 
esteem of all parties. His aversion to Bonaparte 
had never been dissembled. When Napoleon's 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 115 

faction first raised him to the emperorship, M. 
Lanjuinais, then a member of the Senate, rebuked 
the serviUty of his colleagues, in full assembly. 
" What ! " exclaimed he, " will you submit to give 
your country a master taken from a race of origin 
so ignominious that the Romans disdained to 
employ them as slaves ? " Several acts of irrever- 
ence had widened the breach, and it was ex- 
pected that this nomination would not receive the 
imperial sanction. But as Napoleon's interest led 
him at this moment not to be on ill terms with 
the legislature, he dissembled his resentment and 
acceded to the choice. He was less reserved, 
however, with the legislative body itself, when at 
length they presented their address. " You may 
meditate," says he, " on the constitution I have 
given you ; you may prepare organic regulations ; 
but, beware, touch not the ark itself : you know 
the danger that awaits such profanation. My 
ministers will tell you the rest." 

Having placed this monument under the guardi- 
anship of his houses of commons and of peers, 
which he had also named, Bonaparte prepared 
himself to enter the field against the presumptu- 
ous foes that were about to invade his frontiers. 

He did not dissemble that the glory of the 
Duke of Wellington had sometimes a little 



116 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

eclipsed his own. He had often, in conversation, 
told his marshals that Wellington was the second 
general in Europe ; but he had learnt, during his 
retreat, that the palm of generalship had been 
contested, and that there were gainsayers per- 
verse enough to doubt the justice of the rank 
he had conferred on himself. " Well," said he, 
rubbing his hands, " I have never had the good 
fortune to come across him ; Je vais me froUer 
contre Wellington^ and I shall send you a good 
account of him." With this presentiment he set 
off for the north, exultingly, " pour se f rotter contre 
Wellington^ 

M. Carnot, in his report on the military state of 
the empire, had raised the troops of the line to 
half a million, and the numerical amount of the 
army to eight hundred and fifty thousand men. 
This statement was greatly exaggerated ; for M. 
Carnot either counted as being really under arms 
the number of men exacted from each depart- 
ment, or the lists sent up by the prefects of the 
number that had marched from the different 
districts or arrondissemens. As minister of the 
interior he might have some grounds for this 
assertion, but as a soldier he was guilty of mis- 
statement ; for he could not be ignorant that the 
citizen, or peasant, who had no means of resisting 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 117 

power in their insulated dwellings, having obeyed 
the injunction of the prefect or his subordinate 
authorities to march from home, deemed it un- 
necessary to make further advances than the 
boundaries of their departments, and that the 
greater number found means to wheel to the 
right or the left, and turning from the fron- 
tier march back to their respective homes. The 
first division of four thousand of those volun- 
teers that had marched from Paris, escorted by 
the gendarmerie, for Nancy, were met half way 
near Verdun diminished to five hundred and 
thirty, the leader asserting to the person who told 
me that he did not expect to reach Nancy with 
more than his own company of gendarmes. 

The minister must have been informed of these 
defections in the sur-numerary two millions of 
men, which Bonaparte had retorted on the allied 
powers when they menaced to send a million to dis- 
possess him of his throne. M. Carnot's report on 
the state of France was so much the more grate- 
ful to the ear of Napoleon, as he had not only 
exaggerated the military force, but had often 
overstepped the modesty of official detail by 
courtier-like strokes of the vast superiority of 
Napoleon's administration over that of the 
Bourbons. This report consisted of eighteen 



118 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

sections, sucli as those of Commerce, Manu- 
factures, Marine, Finance, &c. &c. ; in each of 
which the conduct of the king and the Emperor 
was contrasted, and always in favour of the latter. 
For instance, in the section on the Imperial 
Guard, "Europe," says the minister, "is ac- 
quainted with the courage, the sangfroid^ the 
fidelity of this guard, — an unassailable rampart 
during war, and the ornament of the capital in 
time of peace. This noble corps were treated by 
the Bourbons with hatred and contempt." The 
hatred for these pretorian bands was not con- 
fined to the Bourbons ; they were objects of 
jealousy to the great mass of the army, on ac- 
count of the distinctions conferred on them by 
Bonaparte, and of their superiority of pay, and 
of terror to the citizens in general, who con- 
sidered them as the rampart of imperial despotism. 
"The acclamations," says the minister, "which 
welcomed the Emperor on his return among the 
French have led him to judge that such a people 
may be entrusted to govern themselves, and he 
has therefore given them the liberty of the 
press." 

Was M. Carnot the only person in Paris igno- 
rant from what lips issued these acclamations, and 
the daily price paid jc>o^^r alter au cri? which was the 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 119 

familiar term used by those who were hired to 
vociferate " Vive I'Empereur ! " under the win- 
dows of his apartment at the Tuileries. Some 
persons who pretend to have been in the secret 
of what passed in Napoleon's retirement at the 
Elysee, assert that this report on the state of 
the nation, which it was considered as highly 
important to render flattering to the public eye, 
was not the report of the minister to the Emperor, 
but that of the Emperor to the minister. 



LETTER X. 

June, 1815. 

Bonaparte, having expedited all his civil affairs, 
such as the installation of his chambers of com- 
mons and of peers, informed them that his first 
duty called him to meet the formidable coalition 
of emperors and kings that threatened their in- 
dependence, and that the army and himself would 
acquit themselves well ; recommending to them 
the destinies of France, with his own personal 
safety, and, above all, the liberty of the press. 

When all the ceremonials were completed, 
Bonaparte, smiling within himself at his re- 
shackled slaves, set off for the frontiers. The 
prize which was now to be contested was of no 
ordinary worth ; the leaders who were about to 
meet his hostile garb bore names of no vulgar 
renown, and the world hung in dread attention 
on the deep tragedy which was about to be repre- 
sented. The allied armies were now drawing 
nearer on every side, and war was inevitable, 
notwithstanding the continued imperial declara- 
tions to the last that affairs would be amicably 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 121 

arranged, and that some parts of the frontiers near 
the southeast were actually invaded. But as the 
armies the most dreaded were those hanging on 
the northern frontier, particularly that under 
English orders, it was against this part of the 
allies that every possible force was directed. It 
was concluded that the overthrow of this army — 
of which no doubt could be admitted, so im- 
mense were the preparations against it — would 
strike a salutary terror into the forces of the other 
coalised powers, and determine them to a revision 
of their late precipitate and ill-advised treaties. 

Every exertion was therefore made to assemble 
such an army as should merit the name of invin- 
cible. The choicest troops of the various armies, 
with a most numerous and well stored matmel, 
headed by the Emperor, had raised the hopes of 
the Bonapartists to the highest pitch of enthusi- 
asm, and with whom no doubt was entertained of 
soon re-viewing their hero, with the captive Eng- 
lish general to grace his triumph. The king's 
party were much dismayed in witnessing these 
vast preparations, and adjudged, with sad reluct- 
ance, the first victories to Bonaparte, reposing on 
the congregating forces of Europe, in case of the 
defeat of the English army, to consummate the 
object of the treaty of the allies. Napoleon, in 



122 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

the confidence of speedy and complete success, 
flew to head his army of the north; and only 
a very few days had elapsed, when an hundred 
and one discharges of artillery awoke the Parisians 
at an early hour, announcing what all had either 
hoped or dreaded, — the total defeat of the allies, 
against whom the Emperor had hurled his thun- 
ders. The details of this signal victory were 
waited for with impatience. Every visage was 
marked with exultation or despair ; but every one 
expected, from the loud and lengthened morning 
thunder, that the Vent, vidi, vici^ had taken place. 
The bulletin appeared. It was modest and re- 
served. It spoke indeed of victory, which the 
royalists interpreted into at least a drawn battle, 
but which the Bonapartists were assured was only 
a gentle preliminary hint that the extermination 
of the hostile armies would be next announced, as 
the combat was still raging. The news of the fol- 
lowing day were awaited with seeming compla- 
cency by those last, who, hearing no sound of 
cannon and seeing no bulletin, crowded to the 
hotel of the war department, where they learnt 
from official communications made by the minister 
or the minister's secretaries, that the French had 
once more immortalized themselves in the plains 
of Fleurus ; that the enemy had been overthrown 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 123 

on every point ; that Blucher had flown back with 
his Prussians to Namur, and WelHngton with his 
routed army to Brussels, in extreme confusion and 
with incalculable loss. The official account stated 
that the defeat of the Prussians was so complete 
that there was no expectation of further news of 
them for some time, and with respect to the Eng- 
lish, ^' We shall see, in the course of a day or two, 
what we shall do with them. The Emperor is 
there ! " 

The Emperor was there, to repeat the expres- 
sion of the empty menace ; but in what colours 
should be painted the rage, the despair, the con- 
fusion, the exultation, the excessive joy of the 
various parties, when, on the morning of the 20th 
June, after two days of painful surmise and trem- 
bling expectation, it was whispered throughout 
Paris, " The Emperor is here ! " No one deigned 
to inquire what was the fate of the army. His 
presence in Paris was a bulletin too unequivocal 
of its entire defeat to need further confirmation. 
This act of cowardice had of late years been ha- 
bitual to Bonaparte, and his arrival was always the 
signal of dire distress. A bulletin appeared in the 
afternoon, giving a long detail of the various com- 
bats that had taken place in this campaign of three 
or four days. But though the apprehensions of evil 



124 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

had been strongly raised, they attained not the de- 
tail of the disgrace and horror with which this offi- 
cial recital was filled. " What ! is such the result 
of all this dreadful preparation ? Is it thus that 
our high-sounding hero fulfils his lofty promises ? 
Is this the end of all his boastings when he flew to 
the frontier ? His army, he says, was frightened. 
Is it thus that he attempts to mask his personal 
cowardice by a calumny on the victims of his 
madness and want of skill ? His army has per- 
ished bravely in attacks to which his rashness has 
exposed them ; and while his noble enemy was 
hazarding his person to ensure success, he stood 
aloof from danger to witness his defeat, and fled 
precipitately from the field to Paris to be the first 
herald of his own disgrace." 

Such were the avowals and reproaches of the 
Bonapartean faction. The triumph of the citizens 
in general was decent and reserved ; they feared 
the despair of the Emperor's satellites. The tear 
of joy, the silent embrace, the ejaculatory thanks- 
giving to heaven, marked their demeanour. " Can 
it be true, and are we then delivered ? " was re- 
peated ten thousand times. 

^^ Soldiers," said Bonaparte, on reviewing his 
hosts at Avesnes, after enumerating the Saxons, 
the Hanoverians, the Belgians, the Confederates 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 125 

of the Rhine, and other armies of the coaHtion, 
" they have lost their senses, blinded by a moment 
of prosperity. The oppression and humiliation of 
the French nation is out of their power ; if they 
enter France they will only find their graves, for 
every Frenchman who has courage feels that the 
moment is arrived either to conquer or perish." 
This speech was addressed to them after remind- 
ing them of the fields of Marengo, of Fried- 
land, of Austerlitz, and Wagram. The march 
began. The frontiers were passed in spite of the 
remonstrances of his generals ; the retreating 
movements of the Prussians were described as sig- 
nal victories. Joy brightened his crest; he was 
drunk with hope on reconnoitring the English 
army. A council of war was held in the morning. 
He reluctantly seemed to yield to the opinions of 
all his generals that it was prudent to suspend the 
attack ; but before they rose from a repast to 
which he had invited them, the noise of the artil- 
lery told them what account he had made of their 
advice. In a moment of inspiration he had secretly 
given the orders, and his generals had only to re- 
pair to their respective posts. 

" I stood by him," said General to me, 

" on a rising ground, and at a convenient distance. 
His astonishment at the resistance of the British 



126 NAKRATIYE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

army was extreme. His agitation became violent. 
He took snuff by handfuls on the repulse of each 
charge. He exclaimed, ' These English are devils. 
They ought to have given in two hours since.' 
Ere the decisive blow was struck, he took me by 
the arm, ' Come, general, the affair is over ; we 
have lost the day, let us be off.' " 

Bonaparte, who was not ill read in history, did 
not recollect a trait of the death of Scipio, the 
son-in-law of Pompey. When Scipio, after having 
been worsted in Africa in support of Pompey, set 
sail for Spain, his fleet was surrounded by that of 
the enemy in his passage. The crew of his vessel 
surrendered. As soon as Scipio discovered it, he 
pierced himself with his sword. When Caesar's 
soldiers asked where was the general, the general 
answered, " He is where he ought to be," and 
then expired. This trait forms a curious contrast 
with the event of the memorable day of Waterloo. 
The grenadiers of the imperial guard, who fell 
with heroic courage on the field, had sworn to 
conquer or to die. English valour denied them 
victory, but could not prevent them from fulfilling 
the alternative of their oath : they died. The for- 
est of Soignies is their grave. The soldiers are 
where they ought to be ; but where is their 
general ? 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 127 

I shall not venture to give you a description of 
this combat, although I have heard it so often 
detailed both by the victors and the conquered. 
You will have read the various relations of this 
destructive day, which is recounted in fifty differ- 
ent ways by the actors, each describing things 
from the point of view in which he regarded the 
scene. "Enfin," said a French general, " I have 
served twenty years ; I had never yet seen British 
troops. It is an army of heroes, the first army in 
Europe. I am yet in astonishment at what I wit- 
nessed." " And their general," said I, " \^ho was 
always classed by your Emperor the second in the 
world ? " " What, Wellington ? Bonaparte is a 
madman ; he never equalled Wellington. Well- 
ington is of no class, he is unique." The general 
fought the battle over again in all its details, 
which I shall spare you, but which would form a 
volume. The subject of Wellington's glory was 
not new to me. The commanders who had served 
against him in Spain were unvaried in their opin- 
ion of his military talents. I have heard them 
often talk familiarly of their campaigns ; had 
Bonaparte heard them also, he would have found 
that their opinion and his own, respecting the 
military rank of Wellington, was not exactly the 
same. These officers, accustomed to such a waste 



128 NAKRATIYE OF EVENTS IN FKANCE. 

of life on the en avant system, were, above all, 
struck by the avarice of blood which they ob- 
served in the English general. 

This system of en avant was the great secret of 
Bonaparte's reputation. It is well known how 
much his mind is subject to superstition, and how 
firmly he believes in the influence of his star 
and his predestined fate, or what he calls his destin. 
His star sometimes turned pale, and his destin 
assumed an aspect of mystery ; but he trusted, 

and still believed. I was told by General , 

who was his first inspector of artillery, which 
answers to our master of ordnance, that the battle 
of Eylau was at one moment lost. " General," 
said Bonaparte, " place your pieces so as to pro- 
tect my retreat; it is all over; we are beaten. 
You see how soon an empire is lost." The 
artillery was about to be placed, when four divi- 
sions of cavalry, that were not expected till the 
following day, suddenly made their appearance ; 
the battle recommenced, and Bonaparte exclaimed 
that his destin had the honours of the day. 

In his successive flights from his army to Paris, 
Napoleon had always found some reason to allege 
in his excuse.^ When he returned from Kussia he 

^ The exclamation was repeated in Paris of an honest 
citizen of the Fauxbourg St. Antoine, who, seeing the Em- 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 129 

raised a smile, even in his servile senate, by attrib- 
uting his disasters, not to the elements or the 
enemy, the flames of Moscow or the snows of the 
deserts, but threw the whole fault upon ideology, 
with which, he said, the senate had been oc- 
cupied instead of furnishing him with fresh 
supplies. The loss of his army in Saxony he 
laid to the charge of some subaltern officer who 
had followed his orders in destroying a bridge 
which cut off the retreat of part of his troops. 
He now published in his bulletin that the panic- 
terror of the army at Waterloo was the cause of 
the present defeat. 

Bonaparte arrived in Paris at three in the 
morning, and assembled his counsellors. It was 
deemed by him necessary to try some master- 
stroke, something great and imperial, which 
should counterbalance the disgrace inflicted on 
him at Waterloo. After much deliberation, he 
thought that the evil impression made on the 
public mind from the disaster occasioned by the 
pretended panic of the army would be best 
neutralized by marching upon the assembly, 

peror pass on horseback soon after the disaster of Moscow, 
said to his neighbour with great simplicity, ^^Mais I'empe- 
reur se porte bien — il a bonne mine — pas de tout Fair 
honteux.'^ 



130 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

and proclaiming himself dictator. Lucien, his 
brother, was peremptory also in this opinion ; but 
there were persons of the council whose minds 
were not bound up to such a terrible feat against 
the liberties of their country, and who declared 
their doubts whether even the instruments could 
readily be found, either among those called the 
Jacobins or any part of the military. This dis- 
cussion was not, however, so secret but that some 
intimation of the brooding mischief reached a 
member of the house of representatives, who had 
been too early skilled in revolutions, and had 
known Bonaparte too well, not to feel that no 
time was to be lost. 

M. de la Fayette, gaining further assurance 
from two of the ministers of the crime that was 
meditating, hurried to the house, which had as- 
sembled at an earlier hour than usual, as the news 
of Bonaparte's arrival had circulated through 
Paris. He found the president occupied in cor- 
recting some defects of grammar in the proces- 
verbal of the preceding day. " Leave your 
erratas," he exclaimed, " there is other matter of 
discussion ; hasten to open the sitting, and give 
me the parole." " Kepresentatives," said M. de 
la Fayette, ^' it is now twenty-five years since I 
raised my voice in this tribune of liberty ; the 



NAKRATIYE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 131 

country is in danger, and can be saved by you 
alone. The sinister reports which have circulated 
these two days past are unhappily confirmed. It 
is you whom it behoves to rally the whole country 
around the national standard, — the standard of 
1789, of liberty, equality, and public order ; it is 
to you to whom it belongs to defend the inde- 
pendence and the honour of France against the 
pretensions of the enemy. A veteran in the 
cause of liberty, a stranger to the spirit of 
faction, I am come to propose to you the previous 
measures which the crisis into which the nation 
is plunged demands ; I am assured that all my 
colleagues will feel their necessity." 

The first of these propositions was to declare 
that the independence of the country is threat- 
ened ; the second, that the house shall declare 
itself permanent ; that all attempts to dissolve 
it are high treason, and that any one who shall 
be guilty of this crime shall be immediately 
arraigned as a traitor to his country. The third 
proposition consisted of thanks to the army and 
the national guard ; the fourth was an invitation 
to the minister of the interior to convoke the staff 
officers of the national guard, and procure arms 
for every citizen who should be called to serve in 
it ; the last was an invitation to the ministers to 



132 NARKATIYE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

repair to the house, and answer all questions that 
should be made them. 

No explanation was demanded by any member 
of the pause of these alarming propositions ; it was 
sufficient that they were made by M. de la 
Fayette, and that Bonaparte was in Paris. The 
three first of these motions were immediately 
converted into laws. The national guard flocked 
round the assembly without waiting a law ; but 
the ministers obeyed the summons of the chamber 
with less alacrity. 

The discussion respecting the dictatorship was 
yet carried on at the Elysee palace, when intelli- 
gence was brought to Napoleon that M. de la 
Fayette was then at the tribune and haranguing 
the assembly. Bonaparte was trifling over his 
cup of coffee ; " La Fayette at the tribune ! " 
said he. The spoon dropt from his hand ; the 
plot was discovered, and the discussion was 
adjourned.^ 

^ All intercourse between Bonaparte and M. de la Fayette 
had ceased for several years. M. de la Fayette was greatly 
indebted to Bonaparte for his intervention at the time of the 
treaty of Leoben, which rescued him from the dungeons of 
Olmutz. On his return to France, at the period of the 18th 
Brumaire, La Fayette, who had other ideas of glory than 
Bonaparte, believed that the latter meant to establish the 
liberties of his country. But, after several serious conver- 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 133 

It is very doubtful whether Bonaparte could 
have succeeded in his project of becoming dictator, 
even if his attempt had not been baffled by the 
timely propositions of General la Fayette ; but 
the lofty attitude which the assembly had now 
taken rendered all hopes of success fruitless. Re- 
course was therefore had to negociation. The 
ministers, who had loitered in the council of the 
Elysee by the Emperor's order, at length ap- 
peared on a second requisition before the as- 
sembly, accompanied by Lucien Bonaparte as 
imperial commissary, who required a committee 
of the whole house to communicate an imperial 
message. This message, which began by an 
elaborate recital of the misfortunes that had be- 

sations with him, M. de la Fayette discovered his error, and 
refused to take any part in public affairs, though pressed by 
Bonaparte and his friends to accept the senatorial dignity. 
His restrictive vote against the consulship for life broke off 
all further communication between him and Bonaparte, and 
occasioned that noble letter to the first consul which was 
found in the papers of Mr. Fox, and published in London, 
several years since. On the return of Napoleon from the Isle 
of Elba, his brother Joseph solicited M. de la Fayette to ac- 
cept the dignity of the peerage, and assured him that the 
Emperor had placed him the first on the list. M. de la 
Fayette answered, that if he again appeared on the public 
scene it must be as representative of the people ; and, having 
thus escaped being a peer, was named in his own department 
member of the house of representatives. 



134 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

fallen the army, concluded with the information 
that the Emperor had named a commission of 
three of his ministers to treat for peace with the 
allies. 

The members, who were led to suppose, from 
the former part of this message, that Bonaparte's 
desire of being released from all further cares of 
government would necessarily follow the avowal 
of his defeat, were astonished, in their turn, at 
this most lame and impotent conclusion. They 
expressed themselves in no measured terms upon 
the project of the Emperor's treating for peace, 
when he himself was the only obstacle to its ac- 
complishment. " Give us," said they, " some idea 
of your new policy. What are your plans, your 
combinations ? Europe has declared war against 
Napoleon alone. Let us have no secrets. Shew 
us the depth of the abyss, we shall find means to 
fathom it ; but how can the Emperor pretend to 
save the country ? " 

Lucien, who on the 18th Brumaire had extri- 
cated his brother from a mauvais pas with the legis- 
lative body, was now without success. His 
invocations to public generosity, to their late 
oaths of fidelity, his accusations of levity against 
the French nation, were urged in vain. The in- 
dignation of the assembly ran high. '^ We have 



NARRATTYE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 135 

followed your brother/' said M. de la Fayette, 
'' across the sands of Africa, the deserts of Russia ; 
the bones of our countrymen, that whiten the 
plains in almost every quarter of Europe, bear 
witness to our patience and fidelity ; it is our 
perseverance that we have to regret, and the 
blood of three millions of Frenchmen. Go, tell 
your brother that we will trust him no longer ; we 
will ourselves undertake the salvation of our 
country." 

Lucien and the ministers had nothing to reply to 
the gravity of these observations. They had them- 
selves anticipated the sentiments of the assembly, 
and returned to conjure the Emperor to send in 
his resignation. It was resolved, at the same 
time, to convene this night a great council, at the 
Tuileries, of all the ministers, of several counsel- 
lors of state, and of five members of each house of 
legislature. The president of this council was the 
Archi-chancelier Cambaceres. The Emperor was 
not present. Various propositions were made 
respecting the modes of defence, and of raising 
supplies. The principal object of the meeting 
seemed to be evaded or forgotten, when M. de la 
Fayette declared, that, in adopting all that had 
been proposed for the defence of the country, the 
first object, that of the abdication, had not yet 



136 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

been mentioned ; he then moved that the council, 
headed by the president, should present itself to 
the Emperor and make the demand. This motion 
did not succeed. The council broke up at three 
in the morning, and the ministers, with the coun- 
sellors of state and some deputies, repaired to the 
palace of the Elysee. The ministers were press- 
ing for the abdication, and particularly the Duke 
d'Otrante, M. Constant, and two of the represen- 
tatives. Napoleon persisted in his refusal till 
he learnt, by one of his counsellors, that if the 
abdication was not sent to the chamber within 
an hour, M. de la Fayette was determined to 
move for his expulsion. The respite of an hour 
was given for reflection, and the assembly adjourned 
for an hour ; at the end of that time it resumed its 
sitting, and received the formal abdication of the 
imperial throne. 

It was now that Bonaparte began to feel that 
the disgrace inflicted on him at Waterloo was 
about to receive its consummation at Paris, since 
the only expiation of his unskilfulness as general 
was the resignation of his crown as emperor. He 
was at length convinced that he could only pre- 
vent his expulsion by voluntary abdication. This 
seeming act of virtue was sent to each of the 
chambers, as a sacrifice he made to the peace 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 137 

of France and the hatred of Europe, with the 
condition that the legislative bodies proclaimed 
his son. Napoleon the Second, Emperor of the 
French. 

The assembly, without attending to the article 
respecting the young Napoleon, accepted solemnly, 
in the name of the French people, the abdication 
of Napoleon Bonaparte, and named a deputation, 
composed of the president, the vice-president, and 
the secretaries, to offer him the thanks of the 
chamber. It was an interesting spectacle, said 
one of the deputation to me, to behold those nine 
representatives of the people, invested only with 
the force of public opinion and the decree of the 
assembly, entering the palace of this man against 
whom a million of soldiers were in arms, who had 
given orders to all the sovereigns of the continent, 
who still commanded the French armies, the guard 
which surrounded him, and a numerous party in 
the fauxbourgs, to announce to him that he was 
no longer emperor, and that the nation resumed 
the government. He received the deputation, 
surrounded by all the great officers of his house- 
hold and those of his guard, with all the pomp 
suitable to the imperial dignity of which he was 
about to be deprived. His figure and deportment 
were calm ; he said that a great disaster had hap- 



138 NARRATIYE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

pened, but that the territory was yet untouched ; 
he spoke of the sacrifice which he madcj at the 
de^re of the chamber, to pubhc circumstances 
and to his tenderness for his son. The president 
observed to him, in a respectful tone, that the 
assembly, whose decree he had just read, had not 
deliberated on that part of his message, but that 
he would render an account of his Majesty's 
observations. ^'1 thought so," said Bonaparte, 
aside, to his brother, — "I did not suppose they 
could do it ; " but resuming, he answered, " Tell 
the assembly that I recommend to it my son." 
The deputation withdrew, still observing the most 
respectful ceremonies. 

What a crowd of reflexions present themselves 
on this memorable interview between Bonaparte, 
La Fayette, and Lanjuinais ! The deputation, on 
their return to the assembly, demanded that the 
liberty and life of Napoleon should be put under 
the protection of the French nation. It was 
generally believed that he would depart immedi- 
ately for the United States. It is certain that, 
had he lost no time, he might at this moment 
have escaped on board a small neutral vessel, in 
which a hiding-place was prepared ; but he must 
have fled with only one servant. He hesitated, 
and loitered till it was too late, and, happily for 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 139 

the repose of mankind, his destiny led him to 
the Bellerophon. 

Bonaparte had passed through the scene with 
the deputation of the legislative body with dignity, 
and would have left an impression of respect had 
it not been known that he was still acting a part. 
He had resigned the place of emperor, but that of 
dictator still occupied his mind. He had, on his 
arrival, interrogated on this subject a distinguished 
person, who was one of his last conquests, as he 
deemed it, from the popular party. " Can I not 
march upon the two chambers, and proclaim my- 
self dictator ? The deputies will do nothing, and 
there is no time to be lost." " Your Majesty may 
physically execute at this moment what you inti- 
mate," replied his counsellor, " but be assured 
your power will not last three days," — alleging 
reasons for his opinion which Napoleon found 
unanswerable. But for some days after his resig- 
nation the idea of the dictatorship and of the 
opinions he had heard from his counsellor seemed 
still to haunt his mind ; and when the cries of 
the Federes of " Vive Napoleon ! " from without 
the palace, reached his ear, he was heard repeat- 
ing to himself, " It would be but for three days ! " 

The condition of the direct nomination of Napo- 
leon's son to the succession was eluded as dexter- 



140 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

ously as possible by the deputies, the house pass- 
ing to the order of the day, as a son naturally 
succeeded to his father, but stating at the same 
time by the reporter that the safety of twenty 
millions could not be put in competition with the 
fortune of a child. The assembly thought it im- 
prudent to come to a more open declaration. 
Bonaparte, though clothed with no legal authority, 
was still at his palace in the Champs-Elysees, 
surrounded by soldiers, mingled with his old allies 
the mob, who saluted him with their licentious 
cries of " Yive I'Empereur ! give us arms, we are 
ready to support our emperor." These effusions 
of popular sympathy operated on the sensibility 
of the fallen hero. The ex-Emperor testified his 
gratitude by humble greetings, and a certain 
number of arms were distributed to the populace. 
The assembly meanwhile convoked the chiefs of 
the legions of the national guard, and these 
citizen-soldiers formed a formidable and numerous 
phalanx around them. 

The debates of the upper house, called the 
Chamber of Peers, were not carried on with the 
same order and decent observance. An opposi- 
tion arose from a quarter least expected. The 
man who was already consigned to infamy for his 
treason against the king. Marshal Ney, and who 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 141 

had commanded the right wing of the army at 
Waterloo, rose in his place, and gave what is 
called the lie direct to the whole of Carnot's 
favourable report respecting the state of the 
army. The ordinary gravity of this house was 
also interrupted by one of Napoleon's generals, 
La Bedoyere, the first officer who had joined him 
on his landing and had delivered up Grenoble. 
Some hesitation in the house had been discerned 
by him respecting the condition exacted in Napo- 
leon's act of abdication, that of the nomination of 
young Napoleon as emperor. " If," said this 
ofi&cer, "you don't acquiesce, the Emperor will 
draw his sword, and he will yet be unsparing of 
blood. The nation is unworthy of his affection 
towards if The speech of this raving Seid was 
answered calmly by Massena, " You are much too 
young, M. le General." M. Lameth added, " that 
M, La Bedoyere had forgotten he was no longer 
in the guard-house." Nothing further was de- 
cided respecting the succession of Napoleon the 
Second. 

It being impossible to carry on business without 
an executive government, and not unlikely that 
Napoleon might repent of his abdication, five per- 
sons were named to take the supreme command. 
These were M. Fouche, Duke d'Otrante, minister 



142 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

of the police ; M. Carnot, the minister for home 
affairs ; M. de Caulincourt, the minister of the for- 
eign department; the General Grenier, and M. 
Quinette, members of the upper house. The first 
operation of this commission was the nomination 
of ^Ye persons to go and demand peace from the 
allies. No great hopes were entertained of the 
success of their mission, of the propriety of which, 
however, no one doubted ; since the allies had de- 
clared that it was not against France that they 
had made war, but against Bonaparte only, who 
was no longer the chief of the empire. 

The legislative assemblies were not yet com- 
pletely aroused from their stupor, when fear or 
prudence had led them to admit or pass over 
Napoleon's nomination of his son for his successor, 
as the condition of his abdication. They were yet, 
the great majority at least, much exhilarated 
with the incident of the imperial resignation ; al- 
though they still doubted the sincerity of this 
descent, as they knew how well skilled he was in 
trick and stratagem. When the news of the 
death of Commodus was brought to the Roman 
senate, those Conscript Fathers doubted the truth 
of the event ; but when assured that the tyrant 
really existed no longer, they were tumultuous in 
the expressions of their indignation against him, 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 143 

devoting his name to everlasting infamy, and 
ordering the exposure of his remains on the thea- 
tre of the gladiators. Commodus was dead, and 
could not retaliate ; but Bonaparte was still alive, 
and at his well guarded palace in Paris. The 
prudent apprehensions of the degraded Roman 
senate may perhaps form an apology for the 
French senate, whose tyrant had not yet paid the 
forfeit of life ; and though he had witnessed 
the sacrifice of his imperial guard, there yet re- 
mained a number sufficient of these minions of 
despotism, added to the stupid fanaticism of some 
corps of regular troops and the Paris mob, to make 
him formidable when the caprice of resuming his 
power should seize him. There were many who 
longed to treat his memory with as little ceremony 
as those Romans did their fallen tyrants ; but they 
prudently pondered on the maxim of Marius, ap- 
propriated by Barrere, " Qu'il n'y a que les morts 
qui ne reviennent pas ; '^ and felt that it was not 
impossible that Bonaparte might again start up as 
emperor. 



LETTER XI. 

July, 1815. 

The Parisians had been amused during the two 
last months in fortifying the heights round Paris. 
The national guard had been put in requisition for 
that purpose, each battalion in its turn to lend 
their aid to this work of fortification. The Bona- 
partists had not forgotten the ardour with which 
the Parisians of all ages, and even of each sex, had 
lent their aid to prepare the Champ de Mars for 
the first great federation, and they hoped to call 
forth the same enthusiasm. But all that now 
passed was a miserable mockery, indeed, of the 
first bright moments of the Revolution. France 
was no longer a nation rousing itself like " the 
strong man from sleep, and shaking his invincible 
locks ! " All the noble promises of liberty had 
proved faithless, all its altars had been profaned. 

Many of the national guard refused to share the 
labours of the spade, and those who went to the 
barriers, after working a few hours and partaking 
together of a convivial repast, usually returned home 
with their backs strained by this new exercise. 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 145 

The services, however, of the national guard 
claim the eternal gratitude of their fellow-citizens. 
They have stood in the breach, and rescued us 
alike from military and popular oppression; they 
have nobly earned the civic wreath ; they have 
been the tutelar guardians of our hearths ; their 
patriot virtues have acquired the respect even of 
strangers ; conquering armies have chosen them 
for their auxiliaries in the maintenance of public 
tranquillity and order ; and their bleeding country, 
in the hour of danger, has not leaned in vain upon 
their shield. 

The allied armies now drew near the city. 
Their approach had been concealed as long as 
possible ; we had heard of plenipotentiaries, sus- 
pension of arms, the defection of Austria from the 
other coalised powers, the arrival of a considerable 
part of the grand army in good order. But the 
reign of subterfuge and deception was at an end. 
The answer to all the eloquent declamations of the 
Bonapartists was the arrival of crowds of flying 
peasantry seeking refuge within the walls of the 
capital. The experience of the foregoing year 
had taught us what was meant by these sad rustic 
processions, which in the same manner had pre- 
ceded the memorable day of battle, — disastrous 
images of a country in distress, — the long line of 

10 



146 NAKKATIVE OF EVENTS IN FKANCE. 

carts which followed one another in slow succes- 
sion, each filled with the household wealth of the 
owner, who himself helped to drag on his wearied 
horse. On these rustic vehicles were placed not 
what Belvidera calls *^ the massy domestic orna- 
ments/' but old family utensils. — worn mattresses 
and chairs and tables in decay, — and a little 
store of hay and corn, provision for the horse, and 
a cow which followed tied behind the cart. 

The fugitives were fewer in number than on the 
same occasion last year. The country people had 
learnt that the invading army was that of the 
English, and they had heard that the English 
troops are an exception to the general practice 
of plunder and devastation ; that they never 
ill-treated the inhabitants; that they paid liber- 
ally for what they wanted, and caressed the lit- 
tle children. The excellent reputation they had 
acquired last year in the South had flown over 
France to the North; and it was well known 
that wherever the English passed, the unarmed 
inhabitant had nothing to fear. A friend of mine 
wrote to me from the South, " Lord Wellington 
will soon pass near our chateau, but we shall re- 
main in perfect security, — all is safe where they 
appear.'' Many of the peasants who had ventured 
to remain in their dwellings had suffered cruelly 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 147 

from the merciless rapine of the French, and were 
perhaps disposed to exclaim, " Save me from my 
friends ! " They were filled with astonishment 
when they beheld an armed host, four abreast, 
pause when about to enter the field of wheat, in 
crossing the country, and changing their order 
proceed in Indian files, one by one, along the nar- 
row beaten path, careful to do no injury by tread- 
ing on the corn, and avoid " bruising the flowerets 
of the valley with hostile paces." 

In a little village called Vertu, two leagues 
from Paris, the English troops on their arrival told 
the inhabitants they must dislodge immediately ; 
but, to the great surprize of the peasants, the sol- 
diers set themselves to work and helped them to 
remove their little furniture, carefully avoiding to 
break or injure anything by precipitation. " Comme 
ils sont bons ! comme ils sont bons ! " was repeated 
a thousand times by these poor people on their en- 
tering Paris. What a proud tribute of praise for 
a conquering general is contained in those simple 
words issuing from the lips of the vanquished ! 
What an additional lustre does virtue shed over 
those high achievements which fill so bright a 
page in the records of military renown, and which 
have had so signal an influence on the destinies of 
the world ! The name of Wellington was never 



148 NAKKATIVE OF EVENTS IN FEANCE. 

pronounced without veneration by his enemies, or 
the pride of patriotic exultation by his friends, — 
he who has softened the terror of his arms with 
such a benignant ray of moral glory, and has 
taught his victorious bands, amidst the ardour of 
conquest, the avarice of blood. Others may have 
deserved the wreaths of courage, but who has ever 
blended them, like him, with the pure and white 
palms of philanthropy ? Others may claim the 
praise of able generals, but to Wellington will be 
ascribed the denomination of the Great Captain. 
He has exalted valour by an inseparable and sub- 
lime connection with mercy ; and to the history 
of his exploits may be applied, what the celebrated 
Mrs. Montagu observed of the writings of the 
great English moralist, that " an angel might give 
the imprimatur." 

What a singular picture did that part of the 
boulevard present where the fugitives arrived ! 
The passage of the Porte St. Martin was almost 
entirely obstructed by the crowd of Parisians, 
mingled with the peasantry and their cortege of 
wearied animals. On one side of the boulevard 
the people were struggling for admission to the 
celebrated new piece of the '^ Pie Yoleuse," 
the " Thievish Magpie ; " on the other, a little 
black horse dragged along the cart, or ambulant 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 149 

shop, which ever since the departure of Louis 
XYIII. has been established on the boulevard for 
the sale of M. Carnot's famous pamphlet on Regi- 
cide, once sold at six francs, and now offered to 
the public at the moderate and reduced price of 
twelve sous a copy. Farther on, a portion of the 
remains of the imperial guard were marching 
along, " pride in their port, defiance in their eye," 
thundering out "Vive I'Empereur ! " and one of 
them striking with his sabre a poor old man who 
had the imprudence to articulate, in a feeble voice, 
" Mes amis, criez Vive le Roi ! " Five or six 
persons on this day fell the victims of this forbid- 
den exclamation by the hands of those pretorian 
bands. The small number of them that survived 
the battle of Waterloo had returned with rage in 
their bosoms at their defeat, and despair at the 
abdication of their chief. They well knew that 
all they had done and suffered found no answer- 
ing voice of sympathy from the people of Paris, 
except amongst the lowest multitude. In general, 
the mass of the Parisians, rankled by calamity, 
felt far more horror for the tyrant than pity for 
his voluntary victims ; and although no people 
have more sensibility than the French to the 
splendour of military achievements, yet now, in 
the bitterness of their hearts for the evils they 



150 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

had undergone and those with which they were 
menaced, they might well be permitted to ob- 
serve of the heroical courage of the imperial 
guard, " Curse on their virtues, they 've undone 
their country ! " 

Bonaparte, after several disagreeable alterca- 
tions with some of his late ministers, now become 
his masters, withdrew from Paris to Malmaison. 
His continuance at Paris had begun to excite con- 
siderable alarm. " The snake was scotched, not 
killed." Old Napoleon was yet alive for his son. 
These apprehensions had been increased by the 
daily entrance of corps of regular troops into the 
capital, with the accustomed cries of '' Vive I'Em- 
pereur ! " and of whose concurrence Bonaparte 
was assured whenever he might think it expedient 
to exert his imperial energies. Rumours of men- 
acing tendency were spread abroad ; the means of 
evil were still in Napoleon's power, and he would 
not neglect the occasion. The provisionary gov- 
ernment, who were too highly interested in his 
movements not to watch them with an attentive 
eye, invited him, in terms that could not be mis- 
understood, to withdraw from Paris. During a 
few days previous to his departure, he appeared 
meditative and much employed ; it was however 
on his own personal affairs. His attention was 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 151 

turned to the new world whither he was going. 
You may perhaps suppose that the examples of 
those Roman heroes who could not outlive their 
honourable defeat on the plain of Philippi might 
have occurred to his remembrance ; or he of 
Pontus, who, though out of the reach of Pompey, 
sought no further refuge than the Cimerian Bos- 
phorus by the double instrument of poison and 
the sword. You may imagine that he was reflect- 
ing on the friendly offers of his faithful Mameluke, 
who, on his abdication the preceding year at Fon- 
tainebleau, stood before him with his newly-sharp- 
ened scimetar, saying that he waited his orders to 
perform the last duty. The examples of Cato, of 
Utica, of Hannibal, and of so many other illus- 
trious personages, you may believe glided through 
his mind. No ! Bonaparte's thoughts were remote 
from these heathenish deeds of greatness; his 
meditations were of a more sober and familiar 
nature. The preparations with which he was 
busied at this eventful moment, ^'big with his 
fate," were those of perkal and perfumery; and 
his discourse was of the cut, size, and quality of 
various kinds of shirts, and the quantity of poma- 
tums and perfumes which he judged necessary for 
his expedition. The inventory of those objects 
which he has left behind him is not the least 



152 NARRA.TIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

curious fragment found among the collection of 
his state papers. It appears that no detail was 
omitted or neglected for the voyage he was pre- 
paring to make towards the new world, in the 
well-stored cabin of a light frigate ; and as to his 
return to our hemisphere, he left that affair at 
present to his destin. He had in the mean time 
written to the government from his retreat at Mal- 
maison, and solicited to be named generalissimo 
of the army to defend Paris and save the country ; 
but as the government did not think proper to 
confide either the defence of Paris or the salvation 
of the country to his exertions, his demand was 
rejected. 

Relieved from the task of governing the world, 
Bonaparte cheered the monotony of his retreat by 
conversations not only with the military, but with 
some men of letters and artists who visited him at 
Malmaison, and the chief topic of his discourse with 
those persons was the errors and abuses of his 
own government; but in discussing the late 
events he always spoke in the third person, and 
as if he himself had no immediate concern in those 
operations. '' The Emperor," said he, " appears 
to have acted in this instance from such and such 
motives, and in that to obtain such results ; but 
he did wrong in both instances. The Emperor 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 153 

trusted to information that was unfounded. He 
was too precipitate, or too tardy ; he made mis- 
takes which he might easily have avoided, and 
calculated upon mistakes of his adversaries which 
they did not commit." 

Bonaparte was in the vein of being commu- 
nicative ; and happening to overhear a speedy 
answer given by a professional man to a question of 
an importunate neighbour respecting the state of 
his wife, Bonaparte abandoned his critique on the 
Emperor's errors, and began an harangue of three 
quarters of an hour, and without discontinuing, on 
the obstetrical art. Then resuming the tone of 
the Emperor he declaimed against the present 
practice, that it was his intention to have pro- 
posed various ameliorations in the schools, some 
of which he mentioned. Thus, in imitation of a 
famous warrior of antiquity ^ almost as great a 
destroyer of the human race as himself, and 
who had written a treatise on the secret of dis- 
eases or the art of healing, Bonaparte seemed to 
have had the project of writing on this profes- 
sional subject. He might, perhaps, have been no 
less dangerous to mankind in its embryo state as a 
surgeon than he had been to adults as a general. 

The distance which the ex-Emperor had placed 
between himself and the Parisians was not deemed 

1 Mitbriclates. 



154 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

sufficient. The government invited him again to 
quit his Tusculum and repair to his destination at 
Rochefort, where the frigates awaited him. Na- 
poleon's departure from Malmaison was an assur- 
ance to the higher classes of their personal safety, 
and who had dreaded nothing more than the 
defence of Paris by him and his army. Their 
defeat beyond the walls of Paris was too probable, 
and would have drawn on the destruction of the 
city, which w^ould have been inevitably pillaged 
by its defenders if it were spared by the allies. 
The allegiance of the Parisians was transferred to 
the Duke of Wellington, as their only protector. 
The entrance of the English army was anxiously 
looked for, and it was a subject of murmurs that 
the commander of Paris delayed their deliverance. 
The legislature, in the mean time, was earn- 
estly occupied in fabricating a new constitution, 
which was to be offered to the acceptance of who- 
ever should take the sovereign authority ; and this 
was the standing business, or order of the day. 
Commissaries were occasionally dispatched from 
the chamber to exchange compliments w^th the 
troops without the walls, or, in the old civic 
language, to fraternize the deputies proclaiming 
Napoleon the Second, while the troops adhered to 
Napoleon the First, and cried long live that 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 155 

emperor, with whom only they were acquainted. 
A few of the imperial guards who had a better 
comprehension of the affair, understanding that 
their old emperor no longer commanded them, 
having abdicated, deemed it wiser to withdraw 
than fight for they knew not whom. Being repri- 
manded by their colonel, on the boulevards in 
Paris, for their desertion of their post, they 
answered sternly that they had too much honour 
to desert, " mais nous avons abdique." 

The French army around Paris, notwithstand- 
ing the publicity of the imperial abdication, ap- 
peared to doubt of its truth. They declared that 
it was some trick of state, and that they knew 
their emperor too well to believe he would resign. 
This reminds me of the German, who, when a 
report was spread through Germany several years 
since that Bonaparte was dead, exclaimed, " Bona- 
parte mort ! Yous le connaissez fort peu, — il 
s'en gardera bien." 

Napoleon had dispatched a farewel letter to 
the French army under the walls of Paris, dated 
from Malmaison, the 25th June, 1815. This letter 
was addressed to the heroes of the army, and no 
doubt the lowest drummer fancied he saw his own 
name on the direction. " Soldiers," said Napoleon, 
" in yielding to the necessity which separates me 



156 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

from the brave French army, I am confident that 
by its eminent services it will merit that praise 
from its country which is not refused even by its 
enemies. Soldiers, I shall follow your steps, 
though absent. I know every corps, and not one 
of them will gain any signal advantage without 
my having kept an account of the bravery it shall 
have shewn. We have both been calumniated, 
you and myself. Soldiers, a few more efforts, 
and the coalition is dissolved. Napoleon will be 
grateful for the strokes you are about to inflict. 
Save the honour and the independence of the 
French. Be to the last the men I have known 
you for twenty years, and you will be invincible." 

This letter of adieu was distributed to the army. 
It intimated absence ; but the absent might re- 
turn, of which himself was the proof. That he 
would return they believed firmly, and had his 
death been announced they would probably have 
expected his resurrection. Even the belief of 
his absence was by no means general; it was 
imagined that he was lurking in some shape or 
other in their ranks, and that he would stand up 
in his own w^henever the great day of general 
contest should take place. 

The first attack made by the allied armies was 
to the north of Paris, and was confined to skir- 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 157 

mishes and distant cannonade. At three in the 
morning, on the 30th June, I was awakened 
by the first roar of cannon, not as it is usually 
heard in popular cities, — the sign of victory, 
the symbol of public festivity, but the harbinger 
of woe, the messenger of death. The first cannon 
was fired from the heights of Belleville, which 
nearly front my window. I arose immediately. 
What contrasts the scene presented, and what 
dissonant sounds struck my ear ! The sky was 
tinged with the first soft colours of the morning, 
and the hills and gardens covered with the fresh- 
est verdure, except where the Butte of Chaumont 
on the right and the heights of Montmartre on the 
left presented their formidable artillery, which 
was at that moment pouring forth its horrible 
contents ; while, at intervals of silence, the note of 
earliest birds floated along the air, and seemed to 
reproach mankind for this disturbance of nature. 
Strongly impressed with the events of the last 
year, I was too much alarmed at the probable 
events of the present. On the 30th March, 1814, 
I had been awakened also, at the first dawn of 
day, by the roar of cannon placed on the very 
same theatre, — that of the hills which overlook 
my windows. The cannonade on that day was 
long, loud, and tremendous. The vollies of artil- 



158 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

lery were almost incessant during twelve hours. 
Shells had torn up the gardens around us, and our 
only refuge was to retire behind the walls of the 
house, which we hoped were too thick for cannon 
balls to penetrate. That day had indeed been 
awful, till, at six in the evening, the capitulation 
being announced, the tumult of battle gave place 
to the sounds of music ; and some of the soldiers 
of the French army, and those of the allies, joined 
the nymphs of the fauxbourg in the sprightly 
dance, forgetful, alas ! of their fallen comrades. 

The attack on the 30th June, 1815, was far less 
formidable. It was chiefly confined to musketry, 
and slackened very sensibly at six in the morn- 
ing. Notwithstanding the fortifications on the 
heights, the city might have been entered on this 
side, but the slaughter must have been excessive ; 
and the Duke of Wellington, who knew well the 
ground around Paris, made himself master of the 
best positions, and no longer attempting an en- 
trance on the north, the allied army drew off by 
the river towards Neuilly and St. Germain. 

The musketry, which had continued in the plain 
of St. Denis, ceased altogether at about three in 
the afternoon. I then went on the boulevard ; 
all the gay shops that enliven that brilliant walk 
were closely shut up, and what sinister presages 



NAERATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 159 

might be read in every visage of the crowd ! On 
examining the hostile passions pourtrayed in 
every countenance, it seemed as if the assembled 
multitudes waited only the signal for civil war. 
We appeared to be treading on a mine ready to 
receive the spark of explosion. The swarms of 
the Fauxbourgs St. Antoine and St. Marceau were 
let loose. They had taken no part in public 
events since their time of active citizenship in the 
days of terror ; but their dormant patriotism was 
now awakened, bribed or whipped up, and they 
issued from their retreats with the hope of being 
active in some extraordinary scene. Many " a 
smith was there, swallowing a taylor's news." 
Some of the figures in the group were Les Forts 
de la Halle, — corn and coal-porters. They had 
formed a part of the federative deputation of the 
two fauxbourgs to the Emperor, of late styled 
"TEmpereurde la Canaille," and offered their mili- 
tary services. The Emperor, on account of their 
enormous round white and black hats, had pleas- 
antly named them " Ses mousquetaires noirs et 
blancs." These groups were composed of women 
as well as men, for nothing ever passes in Paris, 
great or minute, without the interference of 
women ; and some might have claimed the palm 
from the other sex, in clamour and vociferation. 



160 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

The French commander-in-chief, who was the 
minister of war, had taken his headquarters at La 
Yillette, just without the walls of Paris. From 
thence, as the military business of the preceding 
day was of no great importance, a correspondence 
was established by the minister and his staff with 
the Chamber of Deputies, and by himself with the 
Duke of Wellington. " Representatives of the peo- 
ple," said the minister, '' we are in presence of the 
enemy. We swear before you and the whole 
world, that we will defend to our latest breath the 
cause of our independence and the honour of the 
nation. They wish to force the Bourbons upon us. 
The Bourbons give no pledge to the nation, &c." 
This address was signed by Davoust and fourteen 
generals. The letter to the Duke of Wellington 
contained a formal demand of a cessation of hos- 
tilities, since the object of the war, Napoleon's 
abdication, was accomplished. The Duke of 
Wellington's object was not yet accomplished, 
which was that of the possession of Paris with the 
least effusion of blood possible. He continued 
therefore to invest the city by establishing posts at 
the distance of ten or twelve miles, — at Versailles, 
St. Germain's, to the west of Paris, — taking suc- 
cessive possession of the heights to the hills of Meu- 
don, which overlook the town. These manoeuvres 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 161 

were effectuated, with more or less interruption 
by the French, during the three days that fol- 
lowed that of the first attack in the plain of St. 
Denis. 

While these formidable armies were in contest 
without the walls for the possession of Paris, 
various were the alarms and terrors which agi- 
tated its inhabitants. At length, however, the 
report was generally circulated that the allies 
were about to turn the siege into a blockade ; that 
we had nothing to fear from pillage, and that we 
should only be starved. The arrival, however, of 
the accustomed provisions the next day, through 
the midst of the enemy's camp, led the Parisians 
to apply to Wellington the well known trait of 
Henry the Fourth, when he besieged Paris. 

On the 1st July the scene on the boulevard 
was quite changed since that of yesterday. The 
Parisians expected that the enemy would have 
entered on the first attack, and they were tired of 
the delay. They had heard the cannon at inter- 
vals during twenty-four hours ; yesterday this 
was a novelty, but to-day they felt as if accus- 
tomed to be besieged, and returned to their usual 
avocations and pleasures. Yesterday the theatres 
were shut, which was indeed a striking signal of 
distress in Paris ; to-day, though the great theatres 

11 



162 NAREATIYE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

were closed, the " Thievish Magpie " resumed his 
triumph at the theatre of the Porte St. Martin; 
and that of La Gaiete prepared for the public 
amusement the bombardment of Algiers, a melo- 
drame fitted to fill up the interval of the great 
melodrame of national events. The barriers of 
Paris were prudently shut, and the field of battle 
without the walls was occupied only by military. 
Had not the Parisian women been refused egress, 
curiosity might perhaps have got the better of 
fear; they would have risked a wound in the 
hope that it would not disfigure their faces, and 
the plains of St. Denis might have been strewed, 
not only with wrecks of cabriolets and pleasure- 
carts, but with hats, caps, and other articles of 
millinery baggage. 

In the evening the Italian Boulevard was 
crowded as usual with the gay tribes who, seated 
on double rows of chairs with an interval for the 
walkers, pass the latter part of their summer even- 
ings inhaling the dust in good company. This 
evening, the walk as usual had its itinerant band 
of music, its ices in the adjoining cafes, and all its 
accustomed attractions. 

It may be observed that the Italian Boulevard, 
so long the haunt of the fashionable world of 
Paris, has undergone various changes of name 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 163 

during the course of the Ee volution. In the first 
years of that event this boulevard was denomi- 
nated, or was rather stigmatized, by the appella- 
tion of Coblentz, on account of its being frequented 
by that class of society of which a great part had 
emigrated to that place. On the departure of 
Louis the Eighteenth and the return of Bonaparte, 
Coblentz was subdivided into the Boulevard de 
Gand (Ghent) and the Boulevard de I'ile d'Elbe. 
The former is at the moment I am writing bril- 
liant, with a thousand wreaths of fresh-blown lilies 
twined round every hat, while the latter, that of 
Elba, is abandoned to the faction of the scarlet 
pink and the violet. But to return to the evening 
of the first of Julv. The amusements of the 
boulevard were occasionally varied by the march 
of troops, the beating to arms, the swift pace of 
couriers, the sound of cannon at intervals ; and 
sometimes all gaiety was suspended by the sad 
spectacle of the wounded victims of those skir- 
mishes, writhing in agony and covered with blood. 
I heard one young officer, who was borne along 
on planks by four of his men, and who was mor- 
tally wounded, exclaim as he passed, ^'Achevez- 
moi, mes amis, achevez-moi ! vous voyez que je 
meurs. Vive la patrie ! " '^ Finish me, my friends, 
put an end to my sufferings ; yes, I see I must 



164 NARKATIYE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

die ; heaven preserve my country ! " It may be 
supposed that in the heat of battle such an affect- 
ing appeal and such a noble exclamation might 
pass unnoticed ; but here at home, amidst his 
countrymen and even women, to find no sympa- 
thy, not " as much pity as would fill the eye of a 
wren," no tender tear from any female spectator, 
no interest but that of simple curiosity ! Oh, how 
the spirit of party shuts up every avenue to the 
heart ! how it blunts every better feeling, how it 
renders us cruel and almost wicked ! 

Though no one was permitted to go out of 
Paris, all were suffered to enter ; and we had fre- 
quent news of what was passing without. I met 
a sprightly young captain who told me that he 
had yesterday been prisoner to the English, and 
then began the praises of our countrymen. " We 
thrashed the Prussians," said he, " the day before, 
and we had fixed a party of about a dozen to 
breakfast together yesterday. We saw presently 
that we were pursued by a superior number of 
English officers. We rode hard, having more 
appetite for breakfast than fighting. I rose in one 
stirrup to look around at them : they were still in 
pursuit. My saddle turned round, and I fell to 
the ground. Me voila dans une belle position ! 
They came up, and surrounded me. I thought 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 165 

myself a dead maiij for we had not spared the 
Prussians the preceding day. What was my sur- 
prize when I saw they were occupied in re-sad- 
dling my horse ! ^ Come, get up, sir, if you are 
not hurt ; we shall take no advantage of the neg- 
ligence of your groom ! ' '* 

The British and Prussian forces had now drawn 
nearer Paris, and on Monday, the 3d July, the 
armies were in presence in the plain of Grenelle, 
to the southwest of the city. The French army 
was in possession of the plain, directly under the 
walls ; the allies were ranged on the heights of 
the villages of Issy, Venvres, and Meudon. The 
morning passed in preparations and manoeuvres 
for battle. Many persons went in their carriages 
to the bridge of Jena, which is the passage to the 
field. As the carriages arrived near the bridge 
they were immediately put in requisition ; the 
persons within were desired to alight, and were 
told that the battle w^as about to begin, and that 
their carriages were borrowed to transport the 
wounded. In vain did some ladies remonstrate 
against this military mandate ; in vain they ap- 
pealed to the commander of the guard. They 
were told with more truth than gallantry that 
they were well able to walk ; and it was hinted 
to them that if they did not withdraw, he might 



166 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

be obliged to put them also in requisition to 
attend the wounded. 

The houses of Chailliot within the city walls 
overlook the whole of this plain and the surround- 
ing hills. We were informed that the signal of 
battle was to be given at four in the afternoon. 
This was indeed an aweful moment, the horror of 
w^hich was heightened by the circumstance that 
the great magazine of powder is placed on the 
plain of Grenelle ; and that not only the combat- 
ants on either side might become the victims of 
an explosion, but the city itself might be covered 
with ruins. Is there no pitying angel hovering 
on celestial wing to avert this horrible crash ? If 
the demon of war must rage along those hostile 
ranks, spare, oh, spare this devoted city ! Paris 
belongs not to the French alone ; all Europe is 
interested in its preservation, in its science, its 
literature, its arts, all that it contains of the 
accumulated riches of the civilized world ! The 
destruction of those treasures, the legacy of genius 
to future ages, would be less a national loss than 
a calamity to be deplored by mankind, a crime to 
be arraigned by posterity ! 

Far removed indeed from such barbarous hostil- 
ity was the mind of that general who had now led 
on his triumphant army from the immortal field 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 167 

of Waterloo to the gates of Paris. His first care 
was to prevent superfluous misery, to pour no use- 
less drop into the cup of bitterness. He wished 
to avoid the horrors of a battle ; his volume of 
glory was too amply filled to want one additional 
page of splendour. He had already snatched 
kingdoms from the tyrant's grasp ; he had lately 
achieved a more difficult task, — he had met the 
vaunting conqueror of Europe at the head of the 
most formidable armies ; he had laid his renowned 
legions in the dust; he had torn the imperial 
crown from his brow, and driven him from his 
usurped empire, the capital of which he was about 
to enter. The Duke of Wellington invited the 
French generals to a conference ; he leads them 
through his ranks ; he displays his positions, his 
plans, his resources; he grants them the necessary 
time for deliberation : the sword is returned to 
its scabbard, and Paris is spared ! An honour- 
able capitulation was granted, and the conqueror 
received the most glorious recompense of his 
forbearance, — that of the gratitude of the van- 
quished. 



LETTER XII. 

July, 1815. 



■f 



Agreeably to the terms of the capitulation 
signed on the 3d July, the French army began, 
on the following day, its march beyond the Loire, 
and the allied armies took possession of the posts 
and villages nearest the walls of Paris, such as 
St. Denis, St. Ouen, Clichy, Neuilly, &c. On the 
second day of the surrender Montmartre, now 
become a citadel, was put into their power, and 
on the day following the barriers, or gates of 
Paris. 

Thus, in the short space of fifteen months, was 
the capital of France twice besieged, and twice 
compelled to open its gates and receive the law 
of the conqueror, — Paris, the triumphant city ; 
Paris, which the revolutionarv orator had sur- 
named the " Chef lieu du globe ! " How are the 
mighty fallen ! '' Tell it not in Gath, publish it 
not in Askalon ! " Where are now the invincible 
armies of France, so long accustomed to go forth 
led on by Glory ? Where are those irresistible 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 169 

legions that never fought but to conquer ? What 
is become of those innumerable bands of heroic 
youths she had called into the field, and whose 
brows were bound with all the trophies of intrepid 
valour ? Where are the heroes of Marengo, of 
Austerlitz, of Jena, of Wagram ? Alas ! they have 
been swept away " in the pride of their days " by 
their merciless leader ! Their mothers are child- 
less, and their wives are widows ! They have 
perished on the icy banks of the Borysthenes, or 
fell buried imder the snows of the desert. In 
vain, as they hastened from the conflagrated capi- 
tal of the northern world, the wounded soldier, 
stretched on the earth, implored the retreating 
hosts as they passed by to aid him in his distress, 
to stretch out a hand to raise him up ! In vain, 
with uplifted eyes, did he remind them of the 
fraternal ties of comrade, so sacred to the soldier's 
bosom ! The frank and open heart was now 
steeled by its own misery, absorbed by its own 
dangers, hardened into selfishness by intolerable 
sufferings, rendered inexorable by its own despe- 
ration. The appeal of the expiring soldier for 
mercy was heard by his comrade, and he passed 
sullenly on. No one paused to listen to the last 
groan of those unhappy youths, of whom many, 
torn for the first time from home, repeated in 



170 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

dying the dearest, tenderest of names, — the name 
of mother ! 

The tranquillity of the city was not disturbed 
by any triumphal entry, as on the last year. The 
national guard, who kept the barriers, were re- 
lieved by foreign troops, and observed the same 
order and good humour as if these soldiers had 
been their comrades, I saw about a thousand 
people assembled at the barriers of the Champs- 
Ely sees to witness the ceremony ; which they did 
with a careless air, and seemed disposed to receive 
the allies, as Catherine of Medicis did the head of 
Admiral Coligny, — 

'' Sans crainte, sans plaisir, maitresse de ses sens, 
Et comme accoutum^e a de pareils presens.'^ 

The only disappointment they seemed to feel was 
that of having no grand spectacle, for "Is this 
all ? " was everywhere repeated w^hen the guard 
w^as exchanged. The martial pomp of last year 
had furnished a sight memorable indeed, — a 
procession opened by emperors and kings, with 
crowds of finely accoutred generals, and closed 
by two hundred thousand men parading along the 
boulevards. It must also be observed, that one 
of the most striking circumstances in the march 
of this conquering army through the streets of 
the capital was the modest demeanour of those 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 171 

warlike hosts. They displayed no other sign of 
victory than a branch of laurel which decorated 
their hats ; and even this slight badge of success 
was softened by a white scarf tied round the arm 
of every soldier, as the proffered pledge of amity 
and peace. The pretended barbarians of the north 
seemed to have learnt from the generous mon- 
archs who led them on a sentiment which belongs 
to the highest state of civilization and refinement, 
— that of fearing, even by a look, to insult the 
feelings of the vanquished. 

You will easily believe that the exclamation 
above-mentioned, '^ Is this all ? " and the wish for 
a grand spectacle, was confined to what is called 
the " people." Every enlightened Frenchman, 
every liberal mind, every true lover of his coun- 
try, wept tears of blood at its cruel, its reiterated 
humiliation. They had not been guilty of the 
crime of having conquered Europe, but they were 
doomed to share the punishment and to deplore 
its intolerable disgrace, — disgrace felt at every 
moment, and seen in every object. 

But if the surrender of Paris wounded the feel- 
ings of national pride, no real patriot had wished 
to see the city defended. A vain and hopeless 
defence had been deprecated by all, except by, the 
enraged federes of the fauxbourgs, who sought 



172 NARRATIVE OF EVEI^^-TS IN FRANCE. 

for a share in spoil and pillage ; and, I must add 
also, by a few strangers who had nothing to risk 
or to lose. One of these, a celebrated historian, 
was descanting in a society of the great and the 
opulent upon the duty of resistance and the igno- 
miny of surrender, when a friend of mine observed, 
"On voit que Monsieur n'a rien a Paris que son 
^critoire," — " It appears that this gentleman has 
nothing at Paris but his ink-horn." We have, 
indeed, too often had occasion to observe that 
strangers seem to arrive in France as they would 
go to a melodrame, prepared for extraordinary 
events, and where the deeper the tragedy the 
better they are entertained. 

It is difficult to imagine anything more calcu- 
lated to irritate those who suffer than to observe 
curiosity substituted for sympathy by those around 
them, unless it be to hear the author of these 
calamities extolled in the presence of his victims. 
Nothing surprized the French more, during the 
reign of Napoleon, than to hear the declamations 
of some English visitors in his favour. Those 
strangers could scarcely guess what an effect such 
panegyric ptoduced on a Parisian circle, neces- 
sarily composed, in part at least, of persons who 
had suffered from imperial tyranny. It required 
the whole stock of French courtesy to suppress on 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 173 

these occasions the feelings of resentment, and 
which were the more difficult to stifle from the 
novelty of the provocation. It must be observed 
that for some years past no person in France ever 
praised the Emperor except in speeches to the 
throne. No minister, senator, or counsellor of 
state would have ventured to outrage the feelings 
of society by saying one word in his favour in a 
private salon. These personages talked of Napo- 
leon with quite as little ceremony as others, among 
their friends ; in mixed company they were silent 
on this subject, which was considered as an eti- 
quette belonging to their places, and was there- 
fore admitted ; but it was well understood that no 
attempt would be made to speak in his defence. 
Judge then how the French were astounded when 
they heard some distinguished Englishmen extol- 
ling Napoleon the Great, which they did in the 
French language, but sometimes in English phrase- 
ology ; and the Parisians, who like better to laugh 
than to be angry, occasionally avenged themselves 
by citing pleasantly, in different companies, these 
neologisms in their English idiom. How, indeed, 
forbear a sickly smile when we hear newly-arrived 
strangers, after rolling lightly along the high-road 
in their travelling carriages, having lolled in a box 
at the Opera, walked through the gallery of the 



174 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

Museum, and eat ices at Tortoni's, gravely assert 
that there is no public misery in France, and that 
all is well and prosperous ! The French are the 
same people, in one respect, as in the days of 
Mazarin, — they will bear everything, but they 
will laugh. At the time of Napoleon's return from 
Moscow, after the first burst of their indignation 
had subsided, one of the amusements of society 
w^as inventing or imagining caricatures, which no 
one dared to trace, but which were described in 
company as if they really existed. I remember 
one represented the entry of the French army at 
Moscow. They were seen advancing towards the 
gate, which was thrown open, and where stood a 
Cossack to give them admission, as if it had been 
the door of a spectacle. The Cossack had a label 
on his breast, on which was written, " Entrez, 
entrez. Messieurs ! on ne payera qu'en sortant." 

But to return to our narrative. The allies were 
now in peaceable possession of Paris. An English 
and Prussian camp were formed close to each other 
in the Champs-Elysees, and the white English 
tents made a very picturesque appearance among 
the trees. Here I saw, what to others appeared 
an army of foreigners, my own countrymen, and 
heard them talking familiarly my own language. 
I could not resist holding discourse with these 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 175 

Waterloo heroes, and I hope my French friends 
will forgive me if I felt a little proud of being an 
Englishwoman. Several Parisian ladies who were 
parading in the walk spoke to the sentinels in their 
lisping English, and were sometimes answered by 
the smiling soldier with ^' Eh, Ma'am?" for not 
one word did he comprehend of his own language 
pronounced with a foreign accent. 

In the mean time the legislative body continued 
its labours upon the new constitution and a Bill 
of Rights, in conformity to the example of the 
English at the epocha of their revolution. A 
deputy had some days before been denounced, by 
one of his colleagues, for having written and dis- 
tributed a pamphlet in which, said his accuser, 
" he had the infamy to abandon the cause of 
liberty, and recommend the return of the Bour- 
bons." It was proposed to send him to a mad- 
house, as being the only place fitted for such an 
excess of alienation. This curious motion was 
made in a moment of effervescence after hearing 
the report of the commissaries sent to the army, 
who appeared to have cried, " Vive Napoleon 
deux!" 

This cry, which they misnamed the cry of 
liberty, was re-vociferated by the Jacobins of the 
assembly ; and in the fanaticism of the moment it 



176 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

was proposed to send the offending Bourbonist to 
Charenton, from which^ however, he was saved 
by the inviolability of his character as deputy. 

The debates of the lower chamber had grown 
more violent in proportion to the approach of 
danger; and while the cannon of the besiegers 
were sounding in the ears of these legislators, they 
decreed that an address should be made to the allied 
powers declaring that the Bourbons were rejected 
as the enemies of the French nation, that no propo- 
sition of peace which should tend to the re-estab- 
lishment of this family would be either received or 
listened to, and that the French were resolved to 
perish rather than submit to such a yoke. This 
decree of the chamber was ordered to be dis- 
tributed to the army. 

The French empire, which had for some days 
past extended only from Ville Juif to St. Cloud 
(the distance of Kensington from Bow Bridge), 
and had since been narrowed to the space between 
La Chapelle and Yaugirard (the distance of Mile 
End from Hyde Park Corner), was at this critical 
moment comprized in Paris, and all without the 
gates became the Kingdom of France. 

The king had issued a proclamation, dated from 
Cambray the 28th June, in which he had declared 
his intention to assemble the two chambers imme- 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 177 

diately. The assembly answered this menace by 
the promulgation of a Bill of Rights and the new 
constitution. 

The two hostile camps were now those of the 
legislative body and of St. Denis, near which the 
king resided. The allies of the legislative body, 
which had hitherto been the military, were now 
succeeded by the mob. These citizens of both 
sexes besieged the barriers on the inside, which 
were again closed, and molested and ill-treated all 
passengers who had not divested themselves of 
the white cockade. Crowds of citizens had gone to 
St. Denis to gaze on their returning monarch and 
hail his approach, having their white cockades in 
their pockets, which they placed in their hats 
after passing the barrier, and some had neglected 
or were unwilling to divest themselves of this cher- 
ished symbol at their return. But at the confines 
of the French empire they were severely punished 
for theit temerity. A family of my acquaintance 
had visited St. Denis, decorated with white flowers 
and white cockades; they disdained to conceal 
them at their return, and the marks of their guilt 
were glaring. Their carriage was assailed by vol- 
lies of stones, and their ears by the cry of " Trai- 
terous royalists ! Hang them up, a la lanterne ! " 
&c. The gentleman was already dragged from his 

12 



178 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

carriage, when the national guard interposed and 
saved him, his trembling wife, and daughter from 
the further assaults of the populace. 

This was the last day of the authority of the 
mob, who, fearless of the English or Prussian 
bayonets, were vociferous in their cries of " No 
Bourbons 1 Vive la representation nationale ! 
Yivent la liberte et le pain blanc." ^ While the 
king in his proclamation stated that he had re- 
entered France to make himself the mediator 
between the allied armies and the French, the as- 
sembly decreed a commission of four deputies who 
were to repair to the headquarters of the sov- 
ereigns with the declaration of the chambers, and 
solicit these high and mighty powers to become 
the mediators between the French and Louis 
XVIII. M. La Fayette, named member of this 
commission, assured the assembly that in the three 
conferences held at Haguenau^ the commissaries 

^ ^'My comrades/' said one of the federes, who had been 
sent as spy to the enemies' camp, " we are ruined and be- 
trayed! No more white bread; they swear that we shall 
have nothing but black. I have seen it with my own eyes ; 
it is also devilishly hard baked. Vive la liberte et le pain 
blanc! " The terrified federe had seen the accustomed rations 
for the allied armies. The cry of the populace was thus 
changed for the better, since liberty and white bread are 
more reasonable than liberty and the Emperor. 

2 See Appendix I. 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 179 

had received repeated assurances that the allies 
would not mingle themselves with the internal 
government. This diplomatic contest was how- 
ever decided at Paris, with nearly as much promp- 
titude as that of the field of Waterloo ; for whilst 
the Chamber of Peers was listening to the report 
of the committee on the declaration of that of the 
Deputies respecting the Bill of Rights, and this 
last chamber was pondering on the advantages of 
an hereditary peerage as a part of the constitu- 
tion, a message from the provisionary government 
was announced, which instructed them, that, 
although the allied sovereigns had hitherto ap- 
peared undecided in the choice of a prince to take 
the crown of France, they had on the preceding 
day made a declaration by their ministers and 
generals that all the sovereigns were engaged to 
replace Louis XYIII. on the throne ; that he was 
to make his immediate entry into the capital, and 
that the Tuileries were now in possession of the 
foreign troops. In this state of things " we have 
nothing to do," add they, " but to offer our vows 
for the country ; and as our deliberations are no 
longer free, we deem it our duty to separate.'' 

The Chamber of Peers heard the sentence of 
the allied sovereigns, and withdrew from the Lux- 
embourg in respectful silence. The Commons 



180 NAREATIVE OF EVENTS IN FKANCE. 

were not so disposed. They were hearing the 
report of the commission on some part of the con- 
stitution which they were about to frame, when 
the message of the commission of government in- 
terrupted the speaker at the tribune. The debate 
on the constitution was then resumed, and the 
orator terminated his speech by citing and ap- 
plying to themselves the memorable words of 
Mirabeau in the assembly at Versailles. 

The assembly, finding the capital surrounded, 
had on the preceding day made a solemn declara- 
tion, which might be called its testament, to the 
French nation.^ After a desultory discussion on 
their personal situation, the assembly adjourned 
their meeting to the following morning at an early 
hour. The deputies repaired to the hall at eight 
in the morning, and found it surrounded by a con- 
siderable number of troops, who refused them 
entrance. They repaired to the house of their 
president, where they made the following protest : 

'' Chamber of Representatives, 

'^ Sth July, 1815, 10 o'clock in the Morning. 

" In yesterday's sittings, on the message by which the 

commission of government gave notice that it had ceased 

its functions, the Chamber of Representatives passed to 

the order of the day. It continued afterwards its delib- 

^ See Appendix No. II. 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 181 

erations on the dispositions of the project of the Consti- 
tutional Act, the framing of which was expressly ordered 
by the French people ; and when its sittings were sus- 
pended, it adjourned to this day, the 8th July, at eight in 
the morning. 

" In consequence of this adjournment, the members 
of the Chamber of Representatives repaired to the usual 
place of their assembly. But the gates of the palace 
being shut, the avenues guarded by a military force, and 
the officers who commanded it having declared that 
they had a formal order to refuse the entrance of the 
palace : 

" The undersigned, members of the Chamber, have 
assembled at the house of M. Lanjuinais their president, 
and there they have formed and signed individually the 
present proc^s-verbal, to authenticate the above facts." 

On the morning of July the 8th Paris was des- 
tined to be again united to the kingdom of France. 
The tri-coloured flag, which had hitherto floated 
on all the towers and monuments of the capital, 
bidding defiance to the white flag which waved 
upon the steeples of St. Denis, was now taken 
down and replaced by the crested lily. 

The entry of the king on this day was an- 
nounced, but the public were left in uncertainty, 
whether the entrance would take place by the 
gate of St. Denis or the less frequented road 
which leads to the barrier of Clichy. All was 
doubtful but the joy of the great majority of the 



182 NAKRATIVE OF EYENTS IN FRANCE. 

citizens, who now rushed out in multitudes by the 
re-opened gates to hail their monarch, by whom 
they were received with tender sensibility. The 
Comte d'Artois, in his usual manner of saying 
something agreeable to those who approach him, 
told them, *^ Mes amis, vous serez contens de nous." 
Already a revolution seemed to have taken place 
in the minds of the turbulent federes of the faux- 
bourgs. They had not yet cried " Vive le Roi ! " 
but their vociferations were already tempered by 
the expressions, " Les Bourbons sont de bonnes 
gens ; Le roi est un brave homme, — mais, Vive 
I'Empereur ! " 

Louis XVIIL, attended by the Comte d'Artois, 
the Duke of Berry, and a numerous and brilliant 
escort of regular troops and of the national guard, 
now reached again his capital. I had often w^it- 
nessed imperial processions composed of gay regi- 
ments of lancers with floating banners, groups of 
pages, plumed horses, and the imperial figure 
often vainly soliciting applause. It is true that 
the journals the following day spoke of acclama- 
tions that had never been heard, and of trans- 
ports that had never been felt. The public had 
also been always prepared by programmes for the 
order of the ceremony. At the entry of Louis 
XVIII. there was no programme, for there had 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 183 

been no preparation. The procession was less 
magnificent, but its accompaniments were far dif- 
ferent. No ! Bonaparte, in all the pride of his 
conquests, was never so welcomed ! The people, 
which, as the poet observes, are always the sight 
on these occasions, — the people are moral ma- 
chines, and have feelings which power can neither 
command nor controul. Here was no "■ mouth- 
homage which the poor heart would fain deny, 
but dares not ; " what passed was the pure effu- 
sion of real happiness, and nothing is so contagious 
as the sympathy of a great multitude. It was 
" the joy of tears ; " the people wept, and their 
monarch also. As he passed along the boulevards 
'^ you would have thought the very windows 
spoke ; " they were crowded with women dressed 
in white, and white handkerchiefs floated from 
thousands of fair hands. 

The evening closed by what with great pro- 
priety may be called spontaneous illuminations, 
for nobody had thought of giving any general 
order to that purpose ; but the people understood 
one another, and, as if it had been by the touch of 
some magical wand, all Paris was suddenly lighted 
up. Its poorest inhabitants had found something 
to spare for this demonstration of joy ; and while 
the splendid hotels of the wealthy blazed with a 



184 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

profusion of light, the lonely chamber of the indi- 
gent was cheered also with the luxury of a taper. 
At night we saw upon the surrounding hills the 
fires of the English and Prussian camps, where 
cannon was fired at intervals ; and those com- 
manding sounds gave something of solemnity to 
the whole scene, and produced the effect of that 
instrument whose deep, full base strikes upon the 
ear at intervals, covering the light strains of the 
concert. 

The celebration of this triumph was prolonged 
far beyond the day of the procession ; and nothing 
was omitted to convince the king with what fond 
enthusiasm he was welcomed. No people under- 
stand better the demonstration of happiness than 
the French. Prolonged calamity has rendered 
them sometimes serious, sometimes even sorrow- 
ful ; but their natural position is gaiety. The 
French manner of manifesting joy is always by 
dancing, — a practice, by the way, not peculiar to 
this polished people, but common also to many 
transatlantic nations. The garden of the Tuileries, 
which had been entirely abandoned by the higher 
classes during the king's absence, was now 
thronged by elegant company. Ladies formed 
their own sets for country-dances, and bringing 
their own music with them danced light as 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 185 

nymphs and crowned with Hlies before the win- 
dows of the Chateau, where the king stood, some- 
times gracefully kissing his hand and sometimes 
wiping his eyes, while he witnessed all these 
testimonies of enthusiastic affection. 



LETTER XIII. 

July, 1815. 

While these joys and festivities exhilarated the 
people of Paris, he who had once more yielded 
the throne of France to the race of its ancient 
kings was hastening to seek security in another 
hemisphere. Two frigates were prepared for him 
in the river Charente ; but when he arrived at 
Rochefort, it was blockaded by an English 
squadron, and therefore no hope of escape pre- 
sented itself but by seeking, to use the words of 
Mr. Pitt, " the protection of a tempest." But a 
long dead calm prevailed. In vain Bonaparte 
invoked the winds and accused the elements, — - 
there was no storm but in his agitated bosom. 
It was observed that the spell was now broken by 
which he was once believed to have some kind of 
power, divine or infernal, which controuled the 
natural course of the weather. The times were 
past when the Parisians had often confidently ex- 
claimed on a morning of festival, "It rains, and is 
cloudy ; but the sun will shine when the Emperor 
appears." 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 187 

At length, however, the gale freshened, and he 
eagerly inquired of the captain of the frigate if 
this was the moment to escape ? The captain 
answered that he was ready to obey his orders 
and make the attempt, but hinted to him at the 
same time that it was probable they should go up, 
or go down, pointing emphatically to the sky and 
the water : by which he meant that they should be 
sunk, or blown up. Bonaparte loves life too well 
not to shrink from such an alternative. The 
English had subdued him by land, — with how 
much reason might he deprecate their power on 
their own element ! He had tried English valour, 
and felt its worth ; he now^ resolved to appeal to 
English generosity. He opened a conference with 
the English commander of the station, and soon 
after, under the shelter of the white flag, steered 
his course towards the English frigate and sur- 
rendered himself a prisoner. 

Thus ends the political history of Napoleon Bo- 
naparte, since on the distant and lonely rock beat 
by all the waves of a vast ocean, whither he is now 
steering his course, he is no doubt separated for- 
ever from public life ; and although he is still 
condemned to suffer existence, he has bid a last 
farewel to the present generation, and may be 
said to belong already to history. 



188 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

^^He leaves a name at which the world grew pale, 
To point a moral or adorn a tale.'' 

You desire me to give you a sketch of the 
character of this extraordinary personage ; but who 
at present can well acquit themselves of such a 
task ? We must leave him to posterity. Time 
will place his figure in the point of view and at 
the proper distance to become a study for man- 
kind. At present, and above all in this country, 
we have seen him too near ; we have felt his 
influence too powerfully. His portentous shadow 
has crossed every path of private life, and even 
the persons whom he has not destroyed he has ap- 
palled and stunned, — as the wind of a cannon 
will lay prostrate those whom the ball has never 
touched. But if we leave to future times to seize 
the pencil and draw the bold lights and shades of 
this tremendous picture, we may now sketch some 
of the minuter, scattered traits of character which 
mark so memorable a personage, before they fade 
from the remembrance. 

The great sages of antiquity had each their 
demon ; Bonaparte's demon was his destin. He 
acted as if he thought himself under the immediate 
influence of some sort of superhuman power, and 
in the commission of the greatest injustice seemed 
to persuade himself that it was so ordained by 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 189 

fate. His belief in his own superiority over other 
mortals was so rooted in his mind that he wel- 
comed and rewarded the public declaration that 
the care of this nether world was confided to him, 
and that " God had created him, and rested from 
his labours ; " as also the assertion that he was 
the Vicegerent of the Divinity on earth. He 
deemed it favourable to his views to encourage 
all extravagant ideas with respect to himself. 
Every age has its superstitions. The priests of the 
Egyptian Jupiter hailed Alexander as the son of 
that divinity. It was the belief of the dark ages 
that mankind were subjected to planetary influ- 
ence ; and one of our poets has good-humouredly 
framed this apology for one part of the creation, — 

'* When poor weak women go astray, 
Their stars are more in fault than they." 

But the stars have been long since exonerated 
from those undeserved reproaches; and we are 
now told by the physiology of the day that being 
well-born is a much happier incident than it was 
believed to be by the Romans, although they con- 
sidered this circumstance as a good cause of re- 
joicing. When any new enormity of the Emperor 
became the subject of conversation, I had long 
observed that one person of my acquaintance 
shook his head, like Lord Burleigh in the Critic, 



190 NAERATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

but said nothing. I was curious to know the 
opinion of this gentleman, who is by profession a 
more accurate observer of human heads than 
others. " When I beheld this man ten years since 
in Italy," said this celebrated physiologist, '' I 
augured ill of his destiny. His head partakes too 
much of the organization of the tiger and the pea- 
cock ; it is cruel and climbing." Was Bonaparte 
ill-born or unhappily organized, or did the cruel 
and climbing qualities of his mind contribute to 
produce this formation ? This point I leave to the 
metaphysician and the anatomist. Some persons 
believed that he was in a state of habitual insanity, 
with a few lucid intervals. It is very complaisant 
morality that tends to diminish our horror of guilt 
by attributing its excesses to insanity. If Bona- 
parte was mad, there was too much " method in 
his madness " to exempt him from being classed 
among great and extraordinary criminals. He 
indeed occasionally displayed something like minor 
fits of madness towards his ministers and generals, 
the former of whom were bound to think him 
mad when he answered their observations by a 
kick or a blow, while the latter escaped this im- 
perial mode of reply because he prudently ob- 
served that, like himself, they wore a sword. His 
orders sometimes appeared to issue from the fumes 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 191 

of the tripod, and he was subject to fits of epilepsy 
The obdurate cruelty with which, after a battle, 
he would walk over the field and count the 
number of the slain was too long forgotten by 
the French in the splendour of his victories ; and 
the excess of his vanity was too long pardoned 
because his triumphs were shared by the Great 
Nation, the country that gave laws to Europe. 
Bonaparte despised mankind in general, at which 
mankind has no right to be offended, for he had 
marked it from a sorry point of view ; but he had 
the most decided contempt for what is called the 
people, especially if they were considered as presum- 
ing to interfere with any part of the government. 
I remember being told several years since, by 
some deputies from the Helvetic Republic, that in 
a conference at the Tuileries he proposed a regu- 
lation, which they replied that the people would 
never suffer to be executed. '' The people ! " said 
he. " Who are they ? What do they under- 
stand ? They are only fit to make shoes," — 
citing the Latin proverb. 

Although Bonaparte appeared to court the 
government of the United States, on account of 
the increasing hostile dispositions between that 
government and the English, and which he hoped 
to fan into a flame, his expressions of hatred 



192 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

against the United States were occasionally vio- 
lent and insulting. The ministers of that power 
happily escaped the smart of his invectives, since 
most commonly they did not understand the lan- 
guage of the country to which they were sent as 
the representatives of their own.^ This, however, 
was not the case with Mr. Barlow, the last min- 
ister but one. His long residence in France had 
made him not only acquainted with its language, 
but with the state-practice of its chief. This min- 
ister, distinguished as a man of letters, had also 
been long known for his attachment to the prin- 
ciples that governed his own country. He was 
decidedly averse to the war that then menaced 
America and England, and which it was evident 
Bonaparte wished to promote. 

The Emperor was alternately flattering and 
stern. The minister was unbending. The Em- 
peror was at length made acquainted with the 
minister's private opinion of his imperial policy. 
Required with other ministers to follow Napoleon 

^ ^^I have the honour," said an American minister to 
Bonaparte, ''de vous presenter un respectable marchand 
Americain." The minister meant to introduce a merchant; 
but the term marcliand denoted a shopkeeper. Bonaparte, 
extremely offended, made no answer, but turning to his 
master of ceremonies, ordered him to inform the American 
minister that he received no marchands at the Tuileries. 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 193 

as far as Wilna, Mr. Barlow was compelled to pass 
the Polish deserts in the most severe rigour of win- 
ter, and died at the village of N , the victim of 

what he deemed his diplomatic duty. 

Bonaparte had a great anxiety not only to 
spread his name throughout the world, but to 
learn what the world said of him, particularly 
the English. He did not understand English, but 
he had a board of translation, and was regularly 
served each morning with the daily London 
papers done into French. He affected to be in- 
different whether he found praise or invectives. 
When a paragraph in an English newspaper 
struck him as being particularly virulent, he sent 
it to be re-translated by another person ; and if 
he found it still more poignant than the first 
translator had made it, and which sometimes 
happened, he reprimanded the poor wight for his 
culpable scrupulosity not to wound the imperial 
feelings, which was the excuse generally offered. 
The translators learnt at last to give every epithet 
its due signification, and even to overcharge it. 

Bonaparte considered the English newspapers 
as good as diplomatic dispatches, and containing 
more accurate information of the state of Europe 
than the reports of his emissaries at foreign courts. 
His translators made such strange blunders in the 

13 



194 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

transcript of names that he often himself collated 
the translation with the original. In one of these 
surveys my name fell under his notice, prefixed 
to a few verses I had written on the peace at 
Amiens. He inquired why they were not trans- 
lated? The translator, with whom I was ac- 
quainted, answered that this had been omitted in 
conformity to his orders to translate nothing of 
literature or poetry in which his name was not 
mentioned. But could this be possible ? An Ode 
on Peace, without any mention of the Great Pa- 
cificator, — Le Grand Pacificateur ! — words which 
now resounded throughout all France ; words that 
were engraved on marble in palaces and stuck up 
below his bust, placed as a sign-post at the door 
of every hedge-alehouse on the highway. 

The ode was translated ; and if the First Con- 
sul was angry at what was omitted, he was far 
more irritated at what he found: this was the 
epithet of ''subject waves," applied to England — 

^^ And thou, loved Britain, my parental isle, 
Secure, encircled by thy subject waves," «&c. 

This was touching a jarring string indeed ; this 
was declaring myself of the faction of sea-despots. 
It was almost treason ; but I had friends at court, 
and therefore escaped with a slight punishment, 
inflicted a few months after by the prefect of 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 195 

police, who arrested me and my whole family on 
pretext of examining my papers, — from which 
ordeal I came out triumphant, having been de- 
tained a prisoner only twenty-four hours. 

Napoleon considered the police of his own 
newspapers as a matter of high importance. 
When he was in Paris, the ofl&cial paper, before it 
was struck off, underwent his inspection, and in 
the coarse of the impression often received impe- 
rial corrections. He was himself a contributor; 
his style is very distinguishable, and some of his 
notes are extremely curious. He affected to 
protect science and letters. This protection was 
commonly extended to persons whose mediocrity 
stood in need of it, — small men of letters, by 
whom it v/as repaid with interest. There were, 
indeed, also a few men of distinguished genius, 
whose approbation of his measures had led him 
to name them to eminent posts.^ Bonaparte had 
once been very intimately acquainted with M. 
Ducis, the present father of French poetry, and 
who has introduced Hamlet, Othello, and Macbeth, 
on the French stage. M. Ducis had approved 

•^ He was, however, sometimes tired with excess of ser- 
vility, and answered one of the literati, who recommended 
another because he was of an ancient and noble family, by 
saying peevishly, ' ' Laissez-nous, au moins, la republique 
des lettrest " — ''Leave us, at least, the republic of letters!" 



196 IS'ARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

Bonaparte while he thought him the friend of his 
country, but refused all further communion with 
him when he became its oppressor. The Muses 
in France have as little of the wisdom of this 
world as in other countries, and understand no 
better the art of being rich. Bonaparte knew 
that the fortune of M. Ducis was in " a poetical 
posture," and he offered him the place of senator, 
which includes a very considerable salary. Ducis 
rejected the place as being unfit for a poet. 
Bonaparte would have decorated him with the 
Legion of Honour; again Ducis refused. Irri- 
tated at this obstinacy, the Emperor meditated to 
avenge the insult, when he was pacified by some 
of M. Ducis's friends, who excused him on the 
score of his drooping age. I visited this virtuous 
old man, the last of the Eomans, in his retreat. 
He was surrounded by his books, and did not 
appear to regret the wealth and honours he had 
rejected. He was presented, not long since, to 
the king, who addressed the poet in a citation 
from his own works. 

The tragic talents of M. Ducis lead me to the 
recollection of an anecdote relating to the theatre. 

Bonaparte had in the early time of his govern- 
ment expelled the turbulent tribunate, and re- 
duced the legislature to a silent vote ; but there 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 197 

was still one authority in the state which his 
power was unable to controul, a faction which had 
hitherto mocked his efforts. This was the faction 
of the tragic poets, Corneille, Racine, Crebillon, 
&c. The people, amidst the suppression of their 
political institutions and other violations of inde- 
pendence, could still repair to the theatre and 
avenge themselves of Bonaparte in the persons of 
the Caesars, the Neros, the Phocases, of the French 
stage. The people had in long tradition, for a 
hundred years past, applauded certain fine pass- 
ages filled with horror of tyranny or swelling 
sentiments of freedom ; but these passages were 
now waited for and hailed with such excess of 
applause, such a transport of admiration, that the 
government felt itself insulted. The actors, who 
were not displeased at the popular enthusiasm, 
and who no doubt attributed to themselves some 
share of the applause, strove to earn it by acquit- 
ting themselves well of their respective parts, and 
played the tyrant and usurper most maliciously. 
It became indispensable to stop this outrage on 
imperial feelings. The representatives of past 
despots and of captive princesses were ordered to 
appear at the prefecture's of police, and were 
accused of acting the forbidden passages with 
more emphasis than usual. The accusation was 



198 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

a delicate matter, since it implied a certain con- 
sciousness that there was "something rotten in the 
State of Denmark;" and one of the tragical queens 
haughtily answered that she wondered how any 
one dared to hint at such guilty apphcations, and 
that she considered them as treason against the Em- 
peror. The actors refuted the charge of saying 
more than was set down for them by an appeal to 
the prompter's book. They were dismissed with 
orders to "mouth it less," and the poets were 
found to be the chiefs of the conspiracy. Their 
persons were beyond the reach of imperial resent- 
ment ; but they did not escape punishment, being 
condemned to a revision of the most brilliant 
passages of their productions. This revision was 
confided to M. Esmenard, who had too much 
poetical taste and talent not to tremble at this 
sacrilegious commission. But the Emperor insisted, 
and he was compelled to submit. He gave me a 
ludicrous account of his association and clossetings 
with Bonaparte, in this murder of the classic poets. 
Many an important dispatch was laid aside to 
weigh the value of a hemistich ; and imperial rage 
against the present sovereigns of Europe was for- 
gotten in contrivance to justify some Eoman or 
Asiatic despot who had fallen under the displeasure 
of Corneille. 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 199 

The public sought in vain to recognize their old 
acquaintances : — 

^^Qui, de simple soldat, a Tempire eleve, 
ISTe I'a que par le crime acquis, et conserve ; 
Et comme il n'a seme qu'epouvante, et qu'horreur, 
II ne recueille enfin que trouble, et que terreur. 

Tyran, descends du trone, et fais place a ton maitre! '' 

The public deserted for a while the theatre, and 
waited the return of departed spirits. 

But you tell me that " Napoleon has performed 
one great act of wide extended charity, which 
covers many a transgression : he has decreed the 
abolition of the Slave Trade." And do you really 
imagine that he would have adhered to this decree 
longer than he found it expedient to flatter in this 
manner the people of England, with whom he was 
assured it would render him popular? Do you 
seriously believe in his tender compassion towards 
the African race, and figure him fraternizing with 
the friends of that oppressed part of our species, 
associating his power with their humanity, — a 
compact of philanthropy between Napoleon Bona- 
parte, Wilberforce, and Clarkson ? I see the first- 
mentioned of the high contracting parties smiling 
with pity at his two allies, — their wild theories 
of universal benevolence, and their insensate prac- 
tice of living only for others. No, no ! Bonaparte 



200 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

would soon have dissolved this partnership with 
virtue. To become the deliverer of one part of 
mankind would have been too pure a glory for 
him who had so long oppressed the other. He 
deserved not the honours of such a triumph. But 
at the moment in which I am writing, this great 
work of mercy is accomplished ; the Slave Trade 
is abolished by the French government. That 
horrible traffic, which seemed an evil too much in 
the sad catalogue of human miseries, exists no 
longer; and while European mothers press to 
their bosoms the children they no longer fear to 
lose, the poor African mother, to whom nature has 
given the same instinctive tenderness, will now 
be spared also the pangs of maternal desperation. 

Bonaparte had at one period so established his 
power that he, as well as his flatterers, deemed him- 
self the irresistible, the omnipotent. He had con- 
quered almost all the nations of Europe ; he had 
trampled on all institutions that were not his own. 
There was but one power that resisted him, — 
one power that rebuked his genius, and baffled all 
his efforts to obtain universal empire. He learnt 
that India was the source of this power. " Let us 
attack England at the source. Think nothing 
gained," he cries, " while aught remains. The 
English are masters at sea, but the dry land is 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 201 

ours. If we cannot stab England to the heart at 
once, we will disable her by cutting off her limbs." 
The Macedonian conqueror had penetrated to the 
Indies with only thirty thousand men ; Bonaparte 
could surely reach the Ganges with at least ten 
times that number. 

When nothing more was intended than a Euro- 
pean irruption, Bonaparte had no counsel to take. 
The continent was to him a high road unin- 
cumbered by obstacles ; and Munich, Berlin, and 
Vienna were regular stages of the journey. The 
sea alone resisted his dominion. He was yet sover- 
eign only of the dry ground ; and over-land to India 
was now the secret order of the day. It was yet 
secret, because the military expeditions to the 
East had been hitherto profitable only to savans, 
to the engravers of charts and picturesque views, 
and to those who were employed at Paris in 
writing the histories of the victories in Egypt for 
the magnificent edition of these exploits which 
was there about to appear. The public were 
therefore not yet admitted to anticipate this new 
and glorious enterprize, which was to emancipate 
Europe and the seas. 

In the prosecution of this plan, difficulties 
might be expected to occur on the road which 
Alexander had not encountered. Some changes 



202 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

in the weapons of war had taken place since the 
time of that hero, when the art of bringing armies 
into the field, in order to stand like machines and 
be mowed down by artillery, was yet unknown. 
Cannon was now become the chief instrument of 
destruction, and must therefore be placed in the 
first line of offensive apparatus. The mode of its 
conveyance so many thousand miles presented 
some difficulties. The master of the ordnance was 
consulted. I saw daily this respectable old gen- 
eral, having lived some years in his hStel. His 
military and his civic virtues had procured him the 
esteem of the Emperor, whom he was too honest 
to flatter or to mislead. I observed him one 
evening exploring my library with some marks of 
impatience at not finding what he sought. When 
his suite of officers were gone, he drew his chair 
towards the fire, and, as I supposed, to finish a 
story of the preceding evening. He saw the 
Emperor every day, and I asked what was pass- 
ing at the Tuileries ? " The Emperor has given 
me a new employment," said he ; *' he orders me 
to be a savant. I wish you to lend me what you 
have of the geography and the manners of the 
East." Of the manners of the East I had nothing 
more modern than the Arabian Nights ; with its 
geography I was better stored. But there was 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 203 

one great obstacle to this imperial adventure 
which it was essential to remove. Alexander had 
conquered Thrace, Illyria, and by the ruins of 
Thebes had secured the silence of Greece before 
he crossed into Asia. It was necessary for Bona- 
parte to assure himself of the neutrality at least, if 
not of the alliance, of the modern Alexander of the 
polar world. This sovereign had once thought 
Bonaparte a man of honour, just and tenacious of 
his word ; he had made peace with him, and 
treaties. The Emperor of Russia had now learnt 
the true character of Bonaparte. Alexander could 
no longer be deceived : he must be subdued. 

The result of this war of passage sickened 
Napoleon of Indian expeditions, dimmed his star, 
broke all his spells, destroyed all his witcheries, 
and brought the Russian armies into his capital. 

This Indian project has eventually led him who 
was about to style himself, not merely the 
Emperor of the West, but who probably hoped to 
be addressed in the language of oriental salutation, 
as Brother of the Moon or Cousin of the Stars, to 
that little speck which rises in a distant ocean, 
where its waves approach the confines of the 
civilized world. 

'' Du midi jusqu'a I'Ours on vantait ce monarque 
Qui remplit tout le Kord de tumulte et de sang: 



204 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

II fuit; sa gloire tombe, et le Destin lui marque 
Son veritable rang. 

'' Ce n'est plus ce heros guide par la Yictoire, 
Par qui tons les guerriers allaient etre effaces; 
O'est un nouveau Pyrrhus, qui va grossir I'histoire 
Des fameux insenses." ^ 

You ask me what will be the fate of France ? 
I remember being affected by a few simple words 
in the " Beggar Girl " (a novel, by the way, with 
which perhaps I was more pleased than I strictly 
ought to have been, because the scene • is laid in 
Scotland, the country of my mother, and its per- 
sonages speak in Scotch accents, which are ever 
music to my ear). I remember the Beggar Girl ex- 
ultingly exclaims, when she approaches the castle 
of Dening-Court, '' I feel as if at last — at last — I 
was going home ! " Are the French people, after 
all the mazy wanderings of the Revolution, are 
they approaching an asylum like Dening-Court, — 
are they going home at last ? This is indeed a 
momentous question. It is not made by me, as 
perhaps it may be by yourself, in the spirit of 
speculative investigation ; to me it comprehends 
all that can awaken solicitude, all that can 
interest the heart, — all chance of personal 
tranquillity towards the evening of a stormy life, 

^ Jean Baptiste Rousseau. Ode X. 



NAKRATIYE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 205 

and all hope of felicity for the objects most dear 
to me, and to whom life is opening. France is to 
me also the country of my friends, — of persons 
endeared to me by the tie of common suffering. 
We have passed through the tempest, to use the 
words of M. de Boufflers, " sous le meme para- 
pluie." How should I have lived so many years 
among the French without loving that amiable 
people (to apply the term in their own sense) who 
so well know the art of shedding a peculiar charm 
over social life ? How much better than others 
they understand the secret of being happy ! — 
happy at a cheap rate, and without being too 
difficult and too disdainful as we are in England 
about the conditions ; while they bear misfortunes 
with a cheerful equanimity, which, if it does not 
deserve the proud name of philosophy, is of far 
more general use, — the former being common 
property, belonging to all, and not, like the 
latter, the partial fortune of an enlightened few. 
I am persuaded that the experience acquired 
by the French nation during their long and 
stormy Revolution will not be lost. Their po- 
litical vanity and presumption required a tre- 
mendous lesson. They have passed through 
many phases, from the wildest anarchy to the 
most oppressive despotism ; and they now really 



206 NAERATIYE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

know what is not freedom. They seek repose ; 
but it must be repose under the safe shelter of 
liberty. " They pretend not/* to use the language 
of the Duke d'Otrante, in his letter to the Duke 
of Wellington, — " they pretend not to more 
liberty than that of England, but they seek to be 
as free." You will not, I am sure, answer, as I 
have heard some of our countrymen, " Liberty for 
England, but arbitrary government for the con- 
tinent." England need not fear the rivalship of 
France in its constitutional freedom. It will be 
some time before the French reach your practical 
science on this subject. They have indeed already 
lost some of that vanity of knowledge which is 
only found in the first steps of its acquirement, 
because we look back on the time when we knew 
nothing. The French were too proud of their 
ABC liberty : they feel now that the alphabet is 
only the rudiment of science. They have learnt 
the table of contents of liberal principles, and they 
will at last comprehend the whole volume. 

The Revolution, amidst all its abuses and its 
crimes, has shed a new ray of light upon France ; 
and it were vain to expect that the French will 
shut their minds against it, and prefer the dark- 
ness of ignorance. The eternal principles of 
liberty are independent of the purposes to 



NARKATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 207 

which they have been made subservient. What 
is good in those principles is unperishable, and 
what has been evil in their application will be 
transitory. But time has no spunge that can 
wipe from the memory of the French the great 
event of the Revolution, and restore prejudices 
that are swept away, ideas that are eradicated, 
manners that are changed, and affections that are 
extinct. The spirit of constitutional represen- 
tation is abroad, and will walk the world. Louis 
XVIII. has no reason to fear its energies, for he 
will be strong only in its strength. 

" J'aimerais bien," said a man of the Fauxbourg 
St. Antoine, to a member of the Convention, who 
was haranguing the people in the time of terror, 
— '^J'aimerais bien, Citoyen Representant, une 
liberte lihre!'' Oh, may such liberty belong to 
France ! May that noble country, which has 
long been so brilliant abroad and so oppressed at 
home, so erect and so prostrate, at length revive 
from the pressure of her unexampled calamities, 
and take her august place among the nations ! 
Yes, she will now form new combinations of glory, 
and seek new objects of activity for her ardent 
spirit in the cultivation of the fine arts, so well 
suited to her elegant genius, in the discoveries of 
science and the researches of truth ; and her 



208 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

energies, no longer wasted on the crusades of 
ambition, but directed tov/ards intellectual attain- 
ments in eternal alliance with the first feelings of 
our nature, will no doubt, from the prevailing 
influence of such a country as France, have a 
powerful tendency towards the general ameli- 
oration of the human race. 



LETTER XIV. 

October, 1815. 

You accuse me of having closed my sketch of 
passing events too rapidly. Is it my fault ? I 
believed that I had brought you to the conclusion 
of the eventful drama, — the fall of the usurper, 
and the return of the exiled monarch to the pal- 
ace of his ancestors. I knew not that we had only 
reached the fourth act of the piece, and that the 
allies had new scenes to perform before they would 
drop the curtain on the events of war. 

The moderation of the allied powers last year 
when Europe was in arms at the gates of Paris, 
with all the feelings of the wrongs it had sus- 
tained and with all the rights of the conqueror, 
would, it was believed, serve as a precedent for 
the conduct of the allies in this second conquest of 
the capital of France. 

It was fondly imagined by the French that 
European politics were changed forever ; and that 
the vulgar ambition of darker ages had given 
place to that magnanimity worthy of our enlight- 
ened times, and confirming all the beautiful sys- 

14 



210 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

terns of human perfectibility. All that had passed 
the last year had served to establish this opinion. 
Satisfied with the glory of having overthrown the 
tyrant of Europe and compelled France to relin- 
quish the immense territories she had conquered, 
all further restitution seemed forgotten ; and the 
only object in Paris that had not been respected 
was the statue of Napoleon, which was quietly 
taken down from the column of victory in the 
Place YendSme, while the monument itself re- 
mained untouched. Upon the whole, with the 
exception of a few provinces which the allied 
armies had traversed, France had suffered but lit- 
tle from their first invasion ; and it was generally 
believed that, having once more accomplished 
their great purpose, they would depart in peace. 

This, however, was not precisely the design of 
at least a part of the allies. The Prussians, since 
their last visit, had found time to reflect on their 
adventures. They had indeed regained their old 
territory, with considerable augmentations; they 
had nothing farther to apprehend from the con- 
queror of Jena and Berlin: but they now re- 
flected that they had been too moderate in the 
conditions of the treaty ; that they had in the last 
visit left the Parisians too many trophies of vic- 
tory, and also that they had yet to retaliate on 



NAKRATIYE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 211 

them a few of the many enormities which the 
French had committed in Prussia. 

The first patriotic project of vengeance that 
occupied Prince Blucher was that of blowing up 
the bridge of Jena, — the execution of which at- 
tempt was prevented by the interference of the 
King of Prussia, whose moderation and mildness 
of character are well known. The next menace 
of General Blucher was that of sending a consider- 
able number of Paris bankers and merchants to 
Prussian fortresses unless they paid, in twenty- 
four hours, the fifth part of the hundred millions 
imposed on the city of Paris. These projects, 
though not executed, were considered by the 
troops as intimations that their own excesses or 
extravagancies would be treated with indulgence. 

A great part of these troops were of the land- 
lueJwj or Prussian levy in mass ; they were in gen- 
eral very poor, and their poverty might excuse 
pillage : but another part of this army consisted 
of professors and students, who, with noble de- 
votedness to the cause of their country, had made 
this crusade as volunteers. The landwehr com- 
mitted great acts of violence, but these armed 
doctors exercised a new kind of vengeance. A 
Frenchman might be robbed, he might suffer 
even indignities with patience ; but to be com- 



212 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

pelled to listen to the discourses of professors and 
students who assured him, like the executioners of 
Don Carlos, that they had come only for his good, 
who would persuade him of the vast superiority 
of the German over the French nation, of the pro- 
priety of detaching from France one or two of its 
provinces on the Rhine, with other topics of simi- 
lar import, — this was a refinement in cruelty 
beyond the rights of war. The bad French and 
worse logic of those war-doctors were alike insuf- 
ferable to French ears and French vanity; the 
tortured Gaul exclaimed in piteous accents, " Eob 
me if you please, shoot me if you will ; but spare 
me your harangues ! " 

The Prussians were thus become the objects of 
general hatred. There might, indeed, be some 
doubt whether they were more detested than the 
Wirtemberghers, the Badois, and the Bavarians. 
The causes of this hatred against the Prussians 
must be placed to the exercise of that spirit of 
vengeance to which this army too readily aban- 
doned itself, and which was not always tempered 
by chiefs to whom we should have attributed 
more philosophic ideas. We may at the same time 
observe that those who suffer are usually unjust. 
Marshal Blucher was often accused unjustly by 
the French because he was the commander-in- 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 213 

chief, and perhaps sometimes because he bore the 
German name which they could most easily articu- 
late. The Generals Bulow, Zeithen, Tauenzien, 
and some others, always interposed their authority 
to prevent the outrages of their troops. 

Order was still preserved in Paris ; but the 
inhabitants without the walls and the country 
around were left to feel the full vengeance of a 
licentious soldiery, who by the most wanton spoli- 
ations taught the French what the Prussians had 
undergone from the former visits of their country- 
men. The poor peasant was too often the victim 
of this vengeance ; the remains of his last year's 
harvest was devoured. The pleasure that the 
husbandman feels in watching the alternate descent 
of the fostering showers and the vivid sun-beams 
that ripen the fruits of the fields was here lost in 
the cruel apprehension that in whatever disposi- 
tion he had sown he should not reap in joy. The 
soldier eyed askance the corn as it ripened and 
the grape as it swelled ; while the desponding 
owner, instead of thanking heaven as usual for 
its bounties, turned no eyes to heaven unless to 
invoke its vengeance on Prussian soldiery. 

The Parisians themselves received occasional 
lessons from these invaders. An old countess in 
the Fauxbourg St. Germain welcomed with polite- 



214 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

ness a Prussian officer who was quartered on her 
house. Invited to dinner at the usual time, he 
ordered that it might be ready at an earlier hour, 
having asked some brother officers to dine with 
him, and throwing himself at the same time with 
his dirty boots on one of the blue silk canopies. 
He went out, and returned alone. The dinner was 
served. He found the first course detestable, and 
threw the successive plates to which he was helped 
on the floor. Shewn to his apartments on the 
second story, he refused to occupy them, and 
ordered those of the first floor to be prepared for 
him, though told that they were inhabited by the 
mistress of the house. After committing a number 
of other extravagancies, such as smoking in the 
lady's houdoir, he took possession of her chamber. 
His servants and dogs having retired to the apart- 
ments prepared for their master, the lady of the 
house was obliged to accommodate herself with a 
room in the attic story. The next morning she 
was summoned to attend the officer, which she did 
with trembling, expecting to receive some new 
insult or humiliation. The countess was astonished 
at her reception. The Prussian led her gallantly 
to a seat, and placed himself beside her. " You 
have no doubt, madam," he said, " been shocked 
at my behaviour in your house. I marked your 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 215 

astonishment at my insolence in spoiling your silk 
furniture, scattering fragments of your viands on 
the floor, smoking in your hoiidoir, turning you 
out of your apartments, and other extravagancies. 
You no doubt thought me a barbarian." The 
countess did not seem disposed to deny the alle- 
gation. " Madam, you have a son in Prussia ? " 
She started, and her eyes filled with tears : " I had 
a son, sir, but I fear he has perished." " Do you 
recognize this writing ? " said the officer, shewing 
her the cover of a letter. " Yes, sir, it is the last 
letter I wrote to my son. I have received no 
answer." "Madam, I am no barbarian, I have 
acted a part and fulfilled a duty enforced on me 
by filial tenderness. I almost hate myself for 
having acted it so well. What I have made you 
suffer for these last few hours, your son inflicted on 
my palsied mother for several months. I will dis- 
tress you no longer : your son is alive. In one of 
the last skirmishes he was wounded dangerously ; 
I saved him from the fury of our soldiers ; my 
mother provided for his safety ; you will soon 
receive him to your arms. Adieu, madam ; I quit 
your house. I have preserved your son, and I 
have avenged my mother." 

In the country through which the English were 
dispersed no complaint was heard. They paid for 



216 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

everything they demanded from the cottager; 
they laboured at the harvest, gathered in the 
fruits of the orchards, and busied themselves in 
the occupations of rural industry. "Happy," said 
the peasants, " the country where the English are 
quartered ! " 

The Austrians and Russians conducted them- 
selves with a becoming spirit of moderation. The 
former had not been goaded on to revenge by 
outrages such as the Prussians had sustained ; and 
the Emperor of Eussia had too liberal a mind to 
seek retaliation for the flames of Moscow in the 
destruction of Paris. 

In the mean time, if France in the possession of 
the allies was no longer at war, it could not be 
said to be at peace. We heard of nothing but 
attacks, skirmishes, and sieges. In vain the white 
flag waved over the ramparts of fortified towns, 
and in vain the besieged demanded to surrender 
to their legitimate sovereign the King of France. 

Paris itself, though spared the worst evils of 
war, wears still the aspect of a conquered city, — 
guarded by foreign troops at all its gates, foreign 
troops posted at every bridge, and cannon which 
seemed as if it were pointed at the palace of the 
Tuileries. The Bois de Boulogne, the Hyde Park 
of Paris, may now be termed rather a desert than 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 217 

a royal domain. We might almost imagine our- 
selves in the wilds of America, amidst huts framed 
of logs and branches, with the ground cleared 
around them, and nothing left but the stumps of 
trees marking where they once grew. The walks, 
formerly crowded with splendid equipages of the 
gay and great, have lost their shade and their 
visitors, and are transformed into streets of tents ; 
here and there a tall withered stalk of a tree 
remains, and serves, like old Lasune's house,^ as a 
rubbing-post for the cattle. 

I sometimes take a walk in this wood, and some- 
times visit the English camp formed at Neuilly, in 
what was once the park of her who was once the 
Queen of Naples. Could Madame Marat, in any 
moment when fancy plays her wildest vagaries, 
have ever dreamt of so strange a transformation ? 
Would she have believed any wizard who had 
whispered in her ear that his magical rod would 
one day change her beautiful and splendid pavilion 
into lodgings and eating-rooms for English officers; 
and that her charming park, with its terrasse gently 
sloping towards the Seine, would be covered with 
soldiers' tents, — the trees cut down to serve the 
English for fuel, and the Austrians, who have no 
tents, for huts; the ground roughened by the 

■^ Julia de Roubigne. 



218 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

wheels of artillery and army waggons ; numerous 
camp-fires lighted in holes dug in the smooth 
lawns, and clouds of steam issuing from a thousand 
boiling black kettles ? 

While I was one day observing the occupa- 
tions of the busy camp, an epitome of the busy 
world, I heard at a little distance approaching 
music : the sounds were slow and solemn. I 
soon perceived a funeral procession advancing 
towards us ; it was the burial of a young Scotch 
soldier. His sword and hat, wdth a band of 
Scotch plaid which conjured up many a recol- 
lection in my mind, were placed upon his coffin, 
which was borne along by his comrades, of 
whom a considerable number preceded and fol- 
lowed their dead companion. The band of the 
regiment played the music of the hundred and 
fourth psalm ; and two drums, with a deep, con- 
tinued rolling sound, formed the base. As the 
procession passed, the noisy camp became suddenly 
still ; every soldier uncovered his head, and those 
on duty at the posts presented their arms. I saw 
some of those brave fellows wipe their eyes. This 
was not the moment when the soldier in the fury 
of battle rushes on death, as if it were some new 
transport to die, careless of himself, and scorning 
even to lament his friend ; this was the calm hour 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 219 

of milder emotion, and the heart had leisure to 
feel ; this was death, but not under the form in 
which the brave are accustomed to despise it. 
They were going, in a foreign land, to render the 
last duties to their comrade, who would see his 
home no more ! I figured to myself the poor 
^yi"g young man, recollecting perhaps, in his 
latest moments, his cottage at the foot of a Scotch 
mountain, and lamenting that he was going to be 
laid at such sad distance from what Ossian calls 
" the rock of his rest." I followed him to his grave 
in the churchyard of Neuilly, and listened with 
emotion to the burial service, which was read by 
the chaplain of the regiment in English. After a 
long lapse of time passed in a foreign country, 
who can hear unmoved a religious ceremony per- 
formed in that language in which the first prayer 
of childhood has been uttered, and the first feel- 
ing of devotion impressed upon the heart ? 



LETTER XV, 

October, 1815. 

The period was now arrived when a new storm 
no less horrible than unforeseen brooded over 
Paris. It appears that the allied powers, amidst 
those rapid and brilliant successes which in the 
year 1814 had rendered them masters of the capi- 
tal, had not overlooked the chefs-d'oeuvre of art 
which had been wrested from their respective 
countries by the right of conquest. 

The allied sovereigns when they visited the 
gallery of the Louvre beheld pictures and statues 
once their own, and saw them noted in the pref- 
ace of the catalogues, sold at the door, as the 
fruit of French victories. The Prussians had not 
failed to observe that pictures which had decorated 
the bed-chamber of their beautiful and lamented 
queen were then placed in the royal apartments 
of the palace of St. Cloud. 

There was also a statue in the Museum which 
was known by the name of the " Ganymede of 
Sans Souci." This statue was of bronze, and of 
the most beautiful workmanship ; it was no less 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 221 

perfect than the Belvidere Apollo, and held that 
reputation in the north. It was erroneously called 
a Ganymede, the pose of the arms leading to this 
mistake ; but it is a Gladiator giving thanks to the 
gods for a victory just obtained. 

The Prussians demanded, in 1814, the restora- 
tion of this statue, of two pieces by Corregio, and 
the pictures of St. Cloud, which had been taken 
from the apartment of their queen. 

The restitution of these objects became the 
subject of a most fastidious negociation between 
M. Blacas and the ministers of Austria and Prus- 
sia. It had been agreed at the peace of Paris 
that nothing should be touched that was then 
exhibited in the Museum, and M. Blacas wished 
to extend this article to all the paintings in the 
royal palaces. The negociation failed. Paris 
preserved its statues and pictures, and the Prus- 
sians their regrets at not having regained the 
trophies stripped from their queen's apartments. 

The allied armies, in 1815, again crowned the 
hills around Paris, and again a capitulation was 
asked and granted. The Pro visionary Govern- 
ment demanded that the Museum should remain 
untouched. The allied generals wrote with a 
pencil, on the margin of this article, " non ac- 
corde " (" not granted "). This refusal, it appears. 



222 NARKATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

did not arise so much from any decision taken 
with respect to the Museum by the Duke of Wel- 
lington, who would not prejudge the question, but 
because General Blucher, supported by the public 
opinion of his country, had in his own mind de- 
termined upon taking. The article on the respect 
to be paid to public and private property was 
loosely worded. The Provisionary Government 
were perhaps not sorry to have left room for mis- 
interpretation, since the surrender of Paris was 
unavoidable. The allies assert that their respect 
for the monuments of the arts could never be 
justly applied to the retaking of objects which 
had at first been seized by violence. 

General Blucher, immediately upon his entrance 
into Paris, sent a letter to M. Denon, the Director 
of the Museum, demanding not only the objects 
of the last year's negociation with M. Blacas, but 
what was also in the Museum. M. Denon an- 
swered that it was an affair which must be nego- 
ciated with his government, and that he would 
not give them up. M. Denon was arrested during 
the night by twenty men, and was threatened to 
be sent to the fortress of Graudentz in West 
Prussia. 

From this argument there was no appeal. The 
objects demanded were delivered. This surren- 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 223 

der was made in due order ; and the Gladiator, the 
two pictures of Corregio, and some valuable pieces 
of the old German school were carefully packed 
up by the persons employed at the Museum. 
This would have been but a trifling loss had not 
the King of Prussia taken not only what belonged 
to Potzdam and Berlin, but also to Cologne and 
Aix la Chapelle, — countries on this side of the 
Ehine, and therefore not in his possession at that 
period, — on the pretext that these objects be- 
longed to the cathedral and the municipality of 
those towns. 

The public mind again became tranquil ; it was 
asserted these acts of Prussian violence had nei- 
ther the assent of the Emperor of Russia nor of 
the Duke of Wellington, and it was currently 
believed that they had condemned these measures. 

Two months had now passed, when the gallery 
of the Louvre was menaced from another quarter. 
The King of the Belgic Provinces now united to 
Holland had published a Constitution in the mod- 
ern style, — that is, on free and liberal principles. 
It was understood that it had met with a general 
acceptance, for who would refuse the blessings of 
liberty? The acceptance, however, was not so 
cordial as had been generally believed. There 
was a numerous and respectable class of the in- 



224 NAEKATIVE OF EVENTS IN FKANCE. 

habitants of those provinces who were not eager 
to adopt strange doctrines, or suffer them to be 
adopted by those under their influence. 

The Catholic clergy in that country had dis- 
played some energy twenty years since, when, 
threatened with liberal principles, they roused the 
faithful into insurrection against such innovations 
by their then lawful sovereign. The Emperor 
Joseph the Second, who will be ranked in the 
class of philosophic princes, was studious to intro- 
duce what he deemed free and liberal principles 
among his Belgian subjects. But the clergy saw 
in toleration the destruction of religion, and in 
liberal principles the subversion of the privileges 
of the church. They resisted with force of arms 
those dangerous tenets, and framed for themselves 
a government exempt from such political heresies. 

A clergy who had thus put themselves into re- 
bellion for their good old cause against a Catholic 
prince, might well hesitate in accepting the pres- 
ent of liberty which was now offered them by 
their new Protestant sovereign, the King of Hol- 
land. Like the cautious high-priest of Troy, who 
proclaimed his " fear of the Greeks and those who 
were the bearers of gifts," so they considered it as 
a duty to put themselves on their guard against 
this Protestant protection of the Catholic Church, 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 225 

and narrowly inspect whether mischief might not 
lurk beneath a Constitution which was at least 
suspicious since it bore the name of liberal. 

This was a knotty affair ; it was an easier enter- 
prize for the allies to overthrow the tyrant of the 
world, and deliver Europe from its bondage, than 
for a Protestant Prince to render himself popular 
to a Belgian Catholic clergy. 

The English government was highly interested 
in supporting the authority of his new Belgian 
Majesty. It was, in fact, a kind of common con- 
cern. The churches of those provinces had been 
stript of their principal ornaments, and it was be- 
lieved that the restoration of the pictures from 
their bondage in the Museum of Paris would be an 
homage rendered to the faithful and the church, 
and would perhaps soften the opposition of its 
ministers to the acceptance of liberty. 

The public in England seemed at that time to 
have corresponding sentiments with the govern- 
ment, and to approve the removal of the paintings 
in sympathy with the Belgic churches. These 
two causes led the English minister at Paris to 
give in a note in their favour to the Congress of 
the four powers who now govern the world, and 
who were here assembled. The arrival of M. 
Canova at Paris at this period led the English min- 

, 16 



226 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

ister to take the same interest for his Holiness the 
Pope. He represented that the peace of Tolen- 
tino could not be the foundation of any right, since 
the French after taking the objects in question 
had themselves broken the treaty ; and that it 
was therefore just that the more powerful sov- 
ereigns should support the cause of the weaker, 
which was evidently the case with the Pope. Lord 
Castlereagh furthermore represented the advan- 
tages which the arts would obtain by being culti- 
vated at Eome ; and that this idea had been so 
strongly impressed on the French artists them- 
selves that MM. Quatremere de Quincy, Denon, 
David, Giraudet, and forty other artists had signed 
a petition, before their removal, to the Directory 
not to displace those objects. 

Those to whom the English minister's observa- 
tions were known seemed to consider them as 
made rather in compliance with a feeling of 
national jealousy than of strict justice ; and, as 
actions are seldom placed to the account of the 
principal agents, the ardour of the English cabinet 
was attributed to the Under Secretary, Mr. Hamil- 
ton, a gentleman known in the literary world by 
his '^ Travels in Greece and Egypt," and highly 
interested in the progress of the arts. 

But however doubtful might have been the 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 227 

right of the French after the treaty of Tolentino 
had been broken, this reasoning could not be 
applied to the anterior treaty made with the Prince 
of Parma, which was the first treaty in which 
there was any article respecting paintings. 

In answer to the note of Lord Castlereagh, a 
note was given in by M. de Nesselrode on the part 
of the Emperor Alexander. In this note, the jus- 
tice or the injustice of the measure was less in- 
sisted on than its expediency. It represented the 
painful situation in which it placed Louis XVIII. 
with regard to the public ; and that if the allies 
forbore retaking the last year what they deemed 
their property in the Museum, from their respect 
for the king, this motive ought to operate with 
double force at the present period. 

It was for a short time believed that the Russian 
note had produced some effect ; but whether the 
Emperor Alexander relaxed in the energy of his 
representations, or because the Russian troops had 
withdrawn from the capital, this hope proved 
delusive. 

Further observations were made to the French 
government by Lord Castlereagh, and some irrita- 
tion excited at first by the silence which attended 
them, but still more by a severe note from M. 
Talleyrand. The dismission of a popular minister 



228 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

at this period had not, it was said, contributed to 
increase the cordiality of the Duke of Wellington 
with the Tuileries. 

The war of diplomacy now ceased; sentence 
was passed upon the gallery ; a decree of retalia- 
tion had gone forth, and the attack on the Museum 
began. 

The king gave orders to the directors of the 
Museum to authenticate whatever violence might 
be offered. The Museum was shut up. It was 
opened on the requisition of an English colonel, 
who demanded, with authority, the surrender of 
the objects which had belonged to the Belgic 
provinces. English troops were placed on guard 
at the Louvre. The king ordered the gates to be 
opened, but that on no pretence any assistance 
should be given to the invaders. 

A kind of custom-house was established at the 
gate to examine what should be taken. Sentinels 
were posted along the gallery of the Museum at 
every twenty steps, but this did not entirely pre- 
vent fraud. The Belgic amateurs, aided by the 
English soldiery, exercised in alliance their ener- 
gies. The turn of the Austrians came next, who, 
though always slow in their operations, never 
swerve from their purpose. They had appeared 
to have limited their pretensions to the Horses of 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 229 

Corinth ; but, encouraged by the large and liberal 
example of the Belgians in taking, they decided 
on removing the pictures which had come from 
Parma (such as the St. Jerom of Corregio), those 
from Milan and Modena, and the Titians from 
Venice. It was now that the losses of the Museum 
were swelled into magnitude. 

The report that a strong guard of foreign troops 
were posted all night at the Louvre was now re- 
peated from mouth to mouth. The Parisians 
seemed ready to apostrophize the allies in the 
same tone of bitter irony with which Achilles ad- 
dresses Agamemnon in the Iphigenia of Racine : 

^'Un bruit assez etrange est arrive jusqii'a moi, 
Seigneur, je I'ai juge trop peu digne de foi." 

It was sullenly whispered that the allies were 
going to take away some pictures of the Flemish 
school. A fearful apprehension, indeed, of some- 
thing more dreadful dwelt in every mind ; but no 
one dared to express it. We were in the situation 
of Madame de Longueville, when she lamented 
the death of her brother who had fallen in battle, 
but dared not inquire for her son. To be be- 
reaved of the Greek chefs-d'ornvre and of the 
Italian school was an idea too full of horror to be 
borne, a sacrilege from which the minds of the 
Parisians started back aghast. 



230 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

But when the direful truth was promulgated, 
what language can paint the variety and violence 
of passion which raged in every Frenchman's 
breast ! Curses, louder and longer than those 
heaped on the head of Obadiah, were poured out 
on the allies by the enraged Parisians. They for- 
got all other miseries ; the project of blowing up 
bridges, pillage, spoliations, massacres, war-taxes, 
the dismemberment of empire, — all these they 
wiped away " from their tablets." No longer 
were their heads plotting on tyranny, on liberty ; 
they thought no more of the cession of fortresses 
and the fate of the Constitutional Chart ; all prin- 
ciples, feelings, hopes, and fears were absorbed in 
this one great and horrible humiliation. 

Whatever has been recorded in history of the 
depredations of the Goths and Vandals seemed 
light to the public of Paris when weighed in the 
balance with these outrages of the nineteenth 
century. They were in vain reminded that these 
precious objects were the spoils of the vanquished, 
who had now become the conquerors in their 
turn ; despair seldom reasons. The artists tore 
their hair, and even the lower classes of the people 
partook the general indignation. In the liberal 
access which in this country is accorded to all 
objects of art and science, the poor had not been 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 231 

excluded. They too had visited these models of 
23erfection, and felt that all had a right to lament 
the loss of what all had been permitted to enjoy. 

It may be observed, by the way, that this vio- 
lence of resentment, this desperate fury at the 
removal of those masterpieces of art, denote the 
feelings of a people arrived at a very high degree 
of civilization. The Parisians, while they had 
supported with equanimity the most signal calam- 
ities and endured with cheerfulness the most cruel 
privations, deplored with sensibility, and goaded 
almost to madness, the loss of objects which, far 
from being necessary to the wants of ordinary 
life, are only fitted to charm and embellish its 
highest state of refinement. 

While restitution carried on its labours within 
the galleries, the four Corinthian horses, once 
destined to be harnessed to the chariot of the 
sun, placed almost since their birth on triumphal 
arches by ancient and modern tyrants, — those 
fiery animals who have pranced from east to west, 
and from west to east, as symbols of victory, were 
now to descend from their gilded car at the en- 
try of the palace of the Tuileries, in order to pro- 
ceed on their travels towards St. Mark's church at 
Venice, where they had been till lately stationed. 

It must be observed, in honour of the Austrians, 



232 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

that in their attempt on the Corinthian steeds 
they had at first the moderation to spare the 
royal feelings at the Tuileries by making their 
approaches under cover of the night, perhaps also 
to avoid wounding the public as well as the royal 
eye. There was some delicacy in this proceeding ; 
but the gardes du corps on service at the palace, 
unsuspicious of such a mark of deference, mistook 
these Austrian dilettanti for robbers, and charged 
and drove them from their labours. 

The following night, an Austrian piquet sum- 
moned to its aid a body of the national guard. 
This was a most unwelcome duty to those citizen- 
soldiers ; but as the police of the capital always 
required their presence in any moment of conten- 
tion between the foreign troops and the inhabi- 
tants of Paris, they were in the present case 
forced to become the unwilling spectators, at least, 
of this act of national humiliation. Peace was 
thus preserved; but no progress was made in 
these mighty operations towards the removal of 
the horses, and after three nights of ine:ffectual 
labour those animals on the fourth morning still 
stood on their arch, pawing the air. 

But it was now deemed useless to consult feel- 
ings of any kind, except those of the claimants of 
the horses; and the operation of making them 



NARKATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 233 

descend from their heights was continued in open 
day. The square was, however, disembarrassed 
of all French spectators, who were very noisy and 
troublesome in their disapproval of this spoliation. 
Piquets of Austrians were placed at every avenue 
leading to the Place of the Carrousel, to prevent 
the entrance of any French. The palace and the 
court of the Tuileries were thus put into a state 
of siege, of which it was not the king, but the 
bronze horses who were the object. Foreigners 
alone were admitted; and the monarch might 
have seen from his windows an English engineer 
exercising his industry to unfetter the animals 
from their pedestal, the Austrians being clumsy 
artisans, while English ladies placed themselves 
triumphantly on the car of victory to which the 
steeds were yet harnessed. 

If in these days of retributive justice due re- 
spect were to be paid to property, those steeds 
belonged neither to his Austrian Majesty nor to 
the municipality of Venice. In a conversation 
which passed between M. de Tolstoi, the ambassa- 
dor from Russia, and Bonaparte in his days of tri- 
umph, on a question respecting the right to the 
Byzantine dominions towards which Alexander 
was suspected to turn his thoughts, it was hinted 
with some pleasantry by the ambassador that if 



234 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

Napoleon disputed the pretensions of the Emperor 
of Eussia, it was perhaps in consideration of the 
claims of Marshal Junot, in right of his wife, who 
was a Comnene, and really descended from the 
Paleologues. But in the present circumstances 
the claims of the House of Comnene in right of 
their ancestors were laid aside, and those of the 
House of Hapsburg in favour of the last occupant, 
the senate of Venice, were admitted. 

The horses at length descended from their airy 
station with safety. Not such was the fate of the 
winged lion of St. Mark's Place at Venice, which 
surmounted the fountain before the Hotel of the 
Invalids. He was now destined to travel the 
same road with his antique neighbours, the horses 
of the sun. He had but a small height to de- 
scend ; his wings outstretched, as if he would have 
flown to his old perch or pillar of granite, served 
him here in no stead, and the operation of his 
descent was so clumsily performed that he broke 
his legs as well as the edges of the bason of his 
fountain ; while the Parisians felt a vindictive joy 
at the accident which had befallen him, and which 
indeed is less to be regretted as he is an animal 
of little worth, a whelp only of the Middle Ages. 

While the allied troops were employed in the 
removal of the Corinthian horses, all the passes to 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 235 

the Place of the Carrousel were guarded by Aus- 
trian cavalry posted at the avenues of the streets 
that led to it. The Place of the Carrousel was 
forbidden ground only to the French ; foreigners 
had liberty to cross it as often as they pleased. I 
heard an officer call out to an Austrian guard who 
hesitated, " I am an Englishman, and have a right 
to pass." The claim was admitted. 

The gates the most vigilantly guarded during 
some days against the intrusion of the French 
were those of the gallery of the Louvre. It was 
said that this measure was taken from motives 
of tenderness to those feehngs which the scene 
within must naturally have excited in the French ; 
but it was rumoured also that exasperation might 
produce violence, and that the pictures might be 
defaced or statues mutilated. The troops of each 
nation took this post by turns. It was that of 
the Austrians at my last visit. There they stood, 
defiance in their eye against all Frenchmen, and 
fresh green branches stuck in their caps : this is 
the usual ornament of the Austrian soldier's hat 
or cap when in campaign ; but these branches 
appear so much like symbols of victory that 
they are highly offensive to the French. When 
foreigners required admittance, the doors were 
thrown open. The Frenchmen who were refused 



236 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE, 

glanced at the laurelled-cap, bit their lips, mut- 
tered imprecations, and withdrew. 

Some few had, however, the address to procure 
entrance ; they were but few. I found some artists 
pacing the gallery of the paintings ; they had an air 
of distraction, and were muttering curses, "not loud, 
but deep." "• Que le tonnerre du Ciel ! Oh, 9' en 
est trop ! 9' en est trop ! " and other exclamations 
in the same style. A chill sensation came across 
my heart when I descended to the halls of the 
sculpture, and saw the vacant pedestal on which 
had stood " the statue that enchants the world." 
I gazed on the pedestal ; one of the old liveried 
attendants of the hall, interpreting my looks, said 
to me in a sorrowful tone, "Ah, madam, she is 
gone ! I shall never see her again ! '' " Gone ! '* 
said I. " Yes, madam, she set out this very 
morning at three o'clock, et sous honne escorte.^' 
The old man seemed to mourn over Venus as if 
she had been his daughter. 

The adjoining hall presented a few days after a 
most melancholy spectacle. There lay the Apollo 
on the floor, in his coffin. The workmen were 
busied in preparing him for his journey by wedg- 
ing him in his shell, and an artist was tracing his 
celestial features when the trowel with its white 
paste passed across his divine visage ; his arm was 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 237 

still majestically stretched out. The French ar- 
tists who were present wept over it ; they pressed 
his hand to their lips, and bade him a last adieu ! 
The scene was now closed on that perfect image 
worthy of almost divine honours. He was going 
to add a new glory to Rome, and draw new pil- 
grims to his shrine ; but to Paris he was lost for- 
ever, and she might well deplore her calamity. 
She had indeed seized him as her captive, but she 
had gazed on him with unwearied admiration ; 
she had hailed him as the most splendid trophy of 
victory ; and she would have purchased his stay 
with her treasures, even with her blood, had not 
resistance been unavailing. 

In the package of these divinities much appre- 
hension was felt of their sustaining some injury. 
The necessary aid and tools were wanting. No 
rewards, no menaces, however, could prevail on 
the French crocheteurs, porters, and labourers, 
plying in the streets for employment, to lend 
their aid. The French of the lowest class were 
too indignant and mutinous to be the abettors of 
such spoliation. The ladders of the master of an 
exhibition of singes savans (learned monkeys), in 
the neighbourhood of the Louvre, were at length 
put in requisition to unhang the pictures. The 
Pythian divinity of Olympus lay in the streets all 



238 NAKRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

night, and might have suffered from any acciden- 
tal tumult ; and the Venus de Medicis was fated, 
like an abandoned female, to take up her abode 
for some hours in a common guard-house. 

In taking down the Transfiguration, this inval- 
uable picture — the most perfect that exists — 
was suffered to fall to the ground. A general 
shudder from the artists around marked this dis- 
aster. The painting is on wood, and so worm- 
eaten that in some parts it is not an eighth of an 
inch thick. The dust from the worm-holes cov- 
ered the floor round the picture, and excited the 
most terrible apprehensions. It required some 
courage to inspect it ; happily it was found not 
damaged. 

The commissaries of the Duke of Tuscany, hav- 
ing sent off the Yenus, laid their hands on the 
Madonna della Seggia. This beautiful production 
of Eaphael is one of the few pictures that have 
suffered from their residence at Paris ; though it 
is difficult to decide whether this picture was 
injured because in Italy it was covered with a 
glass, and the evaporation of the oil could not 
freely circulate, or if a glacis has been taken off at 
Paris in cleaning the picture. The seizure of the 
objects which made part of the price of the treaty 
of Tolentino consummated the destruction of the 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 239 

Museum, so that there does not remain above a 
twentieth part of the pictures. 

The Spaniards claimed their share in this 
general distribution, and succeeded better than 
they had done in their purpose of invasion, — of 
which it appears that the principal motive was 
that of obtaining new clothes, since they had 
heard, with some envy, that almost all the troops 
of Europe had made their toilette at the expense 
of France. 

In the latter times of Bonaparte, in the year 
1814, an exhibition had been made of the subjects 
of the Spanish school, of the Italian before the 
time of Raphael, and of the German school. 
Some French marshals, to please their master, 
had sent their Morellos to swell this exhibition, 
which pieces had by chance been left during the 
reign of the Bourbons, the short invasion of Bona- 
parte, and to the present period. The Spanish 
ambassador would not have demanded the Mo- 
rellos had they remained in the houses of those 
who had taken them ; but as he found them col- 
lected in an exhibition, he took advantage of the 
negligence of their fresh owners and sent them 
back into Spain. 

And lastly presented themselves the commissa- 
ries of the King of Sardinia. They came at an 



240 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

unlucky moment. The Austrian guard at the 
Museum had been called away to assist in the 
removal of the horses at the Tuileries ; the guar- 
dians of the Museum, raised into indignation at the 
attack of these new commissaries, collected their 
forces, consisting of numerous workmen, and with 
brush and broom swept the Sardinians out of the 
gallery. 

An attack meanwhile was directed against the 
National Library. Among the manuscripts of the 
Vatican which were ceded by the peace of Tolen- 
tino were those which had been pillaged from the 
library of Heidelberg in the Palatinate, during the 
Thirty Years war, by the soldiers of General 
Tilly. These spoils were at that period given to 
the Pope. The commissaries of the Margrave of 
Baden laid violent hands on those manuscripts as 
the original property of their master, now sov- 
ereign of Heidelberg. These manuscripts, both 
Greek and Latin, amounted to four thousand, and 
had been taken from Rome, Venice, and the Am- 
brosian library at Milan. It would have been 
happy if all had gone that road, since the Vatican 
is the grave of manuscripts. Whatever apper- 
tains to the sciences and literature is there lost to 
the world ; the arts only may possibly be gainers. 
On the principle of reclaiming the property of 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 241 

past ages, it would be extremely difficult to make 
out a regular European inventory. 

Madame Junot, being descended from the Paleo- 
logues, might, on this enlarged plan of retribution, 
have put in her claim to the Horses of the Sun. 
A Belgic commissary had a reclamation to make 
for the town-clock of Troyes in Champagne, which 
had been taken from Cambray in the time of 
Charles VI. about four hundred years since. 

The Duke of Wellington may perhaps be taxed 
with remissness for having overlooked, in this 
hour of retribution, certain property that belonged 
to England. When Bonaparte, some years since, 
was on the point of executing his threatened inva- 
sion of England, it was deemed expedient to ex- 
cite the Parisians to a sympathy with such heroic 
enterprize. Volumes of the history of fifteen or 
twenty invasions were circulated; but nobody 
read or believed them. On the maxim of Hor- 
ace, that what is seen with the eyes produces 
much greater effect than what passes through the 
ear, the walls of the Museum were covered with 
pictures proving that the measure was not only 
possible, but had really been executed. The his- 
tory of this marvellous transaction was impressed 
on Parisian incredulity by the display of Matilda's 
tapestry, worked by the queen and her ladies of 



16 



242 NAEKATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

honour, representing, in worsted epic, the heroic 
feats of her husband, William the Conqueror. 
Hume, in his History, refers to this tapestry to 
authenticate some incident of that period. 

The Duke of Wellington, it appears, had made 
no inquiry after this historical furniture. He had, 
however, a clearer right to the tapestry than the 
Belgic commissary to the town-clock of Cambray. 
The tapestry is evidently the property of the 
Prince Regent as heir-at-law to William the Con- 
queror, to whom it originally belonged as the hus- 
band of Matilda. The duke might, however, from 
a sentiment of generosity, have left it to adorn the 
now naked walls of the Museum, and to console 
the French that their ancestors had once con- 
quered England and taken London, though it 
were nearly a thousand years since. 

The French, when their days of mourning and 
humiliation are past, will reflect with some con- 
solation on what they still possess. A respectable 
gallery may yet be formed, when the subjects are 
duly collected. The Rubens, the Le Seurs, and 
the Verne ts, now composing the collection of the 
Luxembourg, may be united with the Poussins 
and the Miguards of the Trianon. There are 
also some Raphaels, — that of Frances 1., the Holy 
Family, and the St. Michael ; some pieces of Leo- 



NAERATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 243 

nardo da Vinci, of Claude Lorrain, of Champagne, 
and the battles of Le Brun. 

The collection of sculpture that remains is unri- 
valled except by that of Italy. Lord Elgin's collec- 
tion is thought to be more precious for the learned 
artist on account of the number of mutilated frag- 
ments it contains, but can give no pleasure like 
that produced by the sight of the Apollo or the 
Laocoon. 

Paris retains the Diana from Versailles, the 
Pallas de Veletri, which was purchased by Bona- 
parte, and also the Museum of the Prince Bor- 
ghese, in which shines the Gladiator, and many 
other subjects which may be compared with the 
firstrate pieces of the Vatican. Bonaparte had 
purchased this collection by the cession of estates 
in Piedmont to his brother-in-law. His Sardinian 
Majesty, on his arrival in his domains, confiscated 
this property. Apprehensions were entertained 
that this measure would occasion the loss of this 
precious collection ; but the Congress of the four 
great powers w^ho deem themselves invested with 
the high police of Europe, signified to the King of 
Sardinia that he must repeal his act of confiscation. 

The Paris Museum might also have been en- 
riched with the collection which had belonged to 
Prince Giustiniani, in which w^ere the Michel 



244 NAKEATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

Angelos of Caravaggio, Guides, and Carraccis ; 
but this collection has been purchased by the 
King of Prussia for five hundred thousand francs. 
The collection at Malmaison contained the fine 
statues of Canova, — the Paris, the Psyche, and 
the Dancing Girl, — and some pieces of Claude 
Lorrain which Bonaparte had taken from Cassel. 
The elector had an intention to claim them, but 
they have been purchased by the Emperor of 
Kussia. 

I anticipate all your observations respecting the 
justice of having stripped the walls of the Museum 
of their treasures. You will tell me that they 
had been wrested from their rightful owners, 
that they never could be considered as French 
property, and that consequently no principle of 
justice has been violated by their removal. You 
will add, no doubt, that these chefs-cfceuvre ought 
to belong to the countries who had the genius to 
create them, though at the same time I presume 
that you would not wish to send them to modern 
Corinth or Athens. You will have ten thousand 
things to say on this subject, all equally just and 
reasonable ; but the French are in the paroxysm 
of despair, when nothing is more irksome than 
reasoning. 

The Parisians assert that amidst the rapid revo- 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 245 

lutions of our times a possession of some years 
gives as great a right to property as would have 
been acquired formerly by the lapse of ages. 
They remark also, with a kind of spiteful sarcasm, 
that this justice so vigorously preached and so 
severely practised by the allied powers in behalf 
of statues and pictures has been less rigidly ob- 
served towards human beings; and that while 
they establish with such grave austerity the rights 
of inanimate objects, it would have been well if in 
the treaties of Genoa and Venice, and the reparti- 
tion of souls, the rulers of the globe had never 
lost sight of the rights of men. 

But the most candid among the French have 
less attacked the justice of the retribution at the 
Museum than the mode of its execution. Instead 
of a solemn surrender by formal treaty, to which 
respect would have been paid, it bore the air of 
seizing spoils by force, and aggravating the loss 
by the infliction of useless humiliation. 

It may be better for the world that these chefs- 
d'oeuvre of the arts are disseminated. Paris ought 
not perhaps to be the spot where all were accu- 
mulated. There is also an intimate connexion 
between moveable objects of art and those' which 
are fixed, — such as the great monuments of 
architecture, and the frescos. There exists per- 



246 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

haps a sort of secret sympathy between the 
Apollo, the Transfiguration, and the Dome of St. 
Peter's and the School of Athens. 

The French artists reject with horror the accu- 
sation that they have tampered in any manner 
with the paintings by restoring draperies. No 
such profanation has taken place. The only use 
they have made of the pencil has been confined 
to the replacing in similar colours small spots, not 
more than the eighth of a line square, where the 
original colour had scaled off. The artists declare 
also that these monuments, though assembled at 
Paris, were always considered as common Euro- 
pean property ; that they were here in a centrical 
situation, where all had an equal access to them ; 
that they were more carefully preserved in the 
Museum than in churches, where their position is 
less favourable to the student ; that the smoke of 
lamps and torches in the Catholic churches is so 
injurious to the colouring of pictures that a great 
number of pieces of Julio Romano, of Titian, and 
even of Raphael were so obscured that it was 
only after having been cleaned at Paris that they 
could be admired in all their parts. 

The artists assert, in reply to the observation 
that the student feels new energies on the classic 
ground of Rome, and that Italian skies are more 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 247 

favourable to inspiration than those of northern 
latitudes, that they have been taught by their 
own experience that Paris is a fitter abode for the 
student than Rome ; since, unobserved in Paris, 
he can fly from crowds to that solitude which is 
so congenial to genius, and where it can best seek 
ideal perfection. It may be also observed that 
although the morals of Paris may not be pure, 
they are still less corrupt than those of Rome, — 
a consideration of the highest importance when 
we reflect on the eternal alliance which exists 
between the progress of taste and virtue. 

Finally, the French artists feel great apprehen- 
sion respecting the safe conveyance of some of 
those chefs-d'oeuvre, from the haste and want of 
skill with which they were packed. M. Canova, 
whom, when announced to a minister as " M. 
I'Ambassadeur du Pape," he had pleasantly called 
^'M. I'Emhalleur,'' not having thought proper, from 
prudential motives, to attend and act in this latter 
office, — M. Canova has had the precaution to 
send these monuments of art to Italy, by the Bel- 
gic and the Pillars of Hercules ; a circumstance 
which perhaps gave rise to the calumny that they 
were destined for Carlton House. 

The sacrifice of the Museum was now consum- 
mated. The Garden of Plants and its cabinet of 



248 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

natural history were destined to undergo a visi- 
tation. This Museum contained many objects which 
had been taken from the Cabinet of Natural History 
of the Prince of Orange, in the first period of the 
French republic. 

Kestitution was here a more difficult task than 
at the Louvre. Statues and pictures can easily 
be identified, and being insulated objects may be 
placed without disadvantage in new situations. 
But in the chain of natural history, the subjects 
being linked together according to their respec- 
tive families, the separation of parts becomes a 
fatal injury to the whole. 

The cabinet of the Stadtholder was less exten- 
sive than has generally been thought. It was 
not so considerable as that of Paris, and the 
French commissaries had not taken the whole. 
In the difficulty of distinguishing this kind of 
property, the professors of the Garden of Plants 
proposed an expedient, which was that of form- 
ing a complete duplicate of their magnificent 
collection for the King of Holland, without 
distinction of subjects belonging or not to the 
Stadtholder's collection. This proposition was 
readily accepted by the minister of the King of 
Holland. 

Thus ends the long chapter of restitution. The 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 249 

die is cast, and fears and reasonings, remonstrances 
and complaints, are alike unavailing. Resent- 
ment now beats high in the bosom of the French, 
but time will exert its accustomed power of soft- 
ening all impressions. Let us hope that France 
will learn to bear adversity with magnanimity, 
and the allied powers to use prosperity nobly. 
They have had much to avenge, but vengeance 
leads to eternal warfare ; and a great nation, 
driven to despair, might be apt to say with Ham- 
let, "I've something in me that's dangerous." 

Every eye is now fixed on our newly assembled 
legislature. It was observed at the opening of 
the session, by a witty statesman, that " there 
were deux chamhres haides^ who would talk like 
deux chamhres basses'' The truth is that the 
house of commons is chiefly composed of mar- 
quisses, counts, and barons. A member of this 
chamber boasted that the titled parchments and 
badges of nobility of the lower house far ex- 
ceed the titles of the house of peers, in which 
are seated so many senators that were once 
notorious. 

The king will, no doubt, endeavour to reign in 
the most constitutional manner. He. wishes to 
avoid the shock of parties, and had displayed a 
remarkable proof of this desire by the nomination 



250 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

of the Duke of Otranto to the ministry of the 
police. This nomination had tranquillized the 
patriot party, which is numerous, and even the 
jacobin party, which is extremely small ; but it 
irritated the ultra-royalists, those of whom it has 
been often said that they are more royalist than 
the king, and who wish to bring back France to 
its state previous to the revolution. 

The first ministry was dissolved. The king has 
composed another, the president of which is 
known for his wisdom and his moderation. 

The debates of the chambers have already 
shewn that the government is more liberal than 
the majority of these representatives of the nation, 
— a strange political phenomenon, and highly 
honourable to the king. His first solicitude, and 
that of the two chambers, will be, no doubt, to 
establish perfect tranquillity in France. The dis- 
orders that have taken place at Nimes and in the 
department of the Gard shew how dangerous it is 
to suffer the people to exercise sovereign autho- 
rity. In that province the Protestants, naturally 
the most zealous defenders of liberal principles, 
became the victims of a licentious armed popu- 
lace, under pretence that they were Bonapartists. 
This re-action in the south is so much the more 
to be lamented, that the malignity of faction has 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 251 

sought to injure the royal cause by insinuating 
that the commissaries of the princes favoured these 
acts of hostility against the Protestants. It would 
be an offence to the French government to justify 
it against such calumnies. 

The king, who it appears has a mind superior 
to the littleness of vengeance, confined to a very 
small number the list of state-offenders. The ultra- 
royalists, or what the other factions term "les 
jacobins blancs,'' call aloud for a general epuration. 
They seem to think, like the ultras in the time of 
our Charles the Second, that they can never find 
axes and ropes enough to punish the guilty. If 
the government did not set bounds to such pre- 
tensions, a double re-action would take place, — 
one against the friends of civil liberty, who would 
be exiled as jacobins and Bonapartists, and an- 
other composed of the patriots and of all the lower 
classes of the people against the nobles. Let us 
hope that all parties will rally round the king 
and the constitutional government. France would 
be exposed to great danger if any new disturb- 
ances arose. An hundred and fifty thousand for- 
eign troops remain on the territory. The foreign 
powers would take advantage of such a state of 
disorder, and perhaps compel France to make ter- 
ritorial sacrifices. 



252 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

Those who have begun disturbances would pre- 
tend that there was a scission among the alhes, 
and that they had at least one of those powers on 
their side. Credulity will do the rest. The people 
were made to believe six months since that Aus- 
tria was about to declare itself in favour of the 
young Napoleon. 

You interrogate me respecting the permanence 
of peace, as if I could read the book of futurity. 
Nations demand guarantees for their tranquillity, 
and those guarantees, by the outrages committed 
on the rights of national independence, become 
new causes of war. We might have hoped that 
the last war and the peace of Paris would have 
extinguished the hatred of the nations of the Ger- 
man race against France. No ! in the north of 
Germany and in the west, on the banks of the 
Ehine, it is said on all sides that the sovereigns 
may in vain make peace ; that the struggle has 
been that of nations and not of dynasties, and 
that the Germans will never consider the quarrel 
with France as terminated till Alsatia and Lor- 
raine, and all the conquests of Louis the Four- 
teenth be restored and united into a kingdom of 
Burgundy, governed by a German prince. 

The governments of Europe have been more 
moderate than the people -, they have not nego- 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 253 

ciated for provinces but for fortresses, which the 
Germans pretend to be points of attack against 
them. In this negociation the Emperor Alexander 
has again displayed that noble and generous char- 
acter by which he has so long acquired the admi- 
ration of the French. 

Bonaparte is fallen. There is no probability 
that France can for a long series of years become 
dangerous as a warlike nation. The purpose, 
tlierefore, of the alliance of Chaumont no longer 
exists ; but the Congress of Vienna, the personal 
friendship subsisting between the allied sov- 
ereigns, and the habitude which the several cabi- 
nets have contracted of transacting affairs together 
and of being in perfect intelligence with each 
other, may perpetuate the alliance of the four 
great powers. Politics have assumed new forms. 
The expressions, " Europe insists — Europe will 
not permit," now signifies that such is the will of 
the cabinets of London, Petersburg, Berlin, and 
Vienna. In conformity to this diplomatic lan- 
guage, unknown five years since, Spain and France 
seem no longer to form a part of Europe. This 
union of the four great powers gives them an im- 
mense physical force. Hence the idea of forming 
the High Police of Europe, — that is, of governing 
the world according to the interests of those four 



254 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 

cabinets. It has been observed, that, of all the 
consequences of the French Ee volution, this was 
the most fatal to the liberty of mankind. 

A European congress would be, indeed, a flat- 
tering dream ; but it may be doubted whether that 
of Vienna will go down with this brilliant title to 
posterity. Hitherto absolute governments, for the 
most part, have deformed the continent of Europe ; 
but should a real European Areopagus exist, it 
will become essential that constitutions should be 
framed for all the states of which Europe is com- 
posed. Some indications of such happy ameliora- 
tion already appear. The rulers of the world 
have, indeed, of late years been compelled to bear 
so many outrages from lawless power that they 
are, perhaps, almost as weary of despotism as the 
people. France has made the expiation which 
those who bend to tyranny deserve. But she will 
lift again her prostrate head ! Her natural ten- 
dency is towards prosperity. Her destiny points 
to happiness. Possessing all the materials of which 
public welfare is composed, she will learn the 
secret of using them well and nobly ; and abhor- 
ring the madness of conquest, will enjoy, in calmer 
triumph, the riches of her climate, her population, 
her industry, and her arts. Upon the whole, let 
us hope that the political convulsions which have 



NARRATIVE OF EVENTS IN FRANCE. 255 

devastated Europe will be succeeded by the bless- 
edness of tranquillity ; and that moderation, mag- 
nanimity, and, above all, the long profaned but 
ever-sacred name of liberty will become the order 
of the day of the nineteenth century. 



APPENDIX. 



No. I. 

As soon as the avowed object of the war — the gov- 
ernment of Napoleon and of his brothers — had been 
overturned, and that the nomination of an Executive 
Commission had destroyed all plans of a regency, an 
embassy was immediately sent to the allied powers to 
stop the march of their armies, and gain information of 
their intentions relative to peace. 

The plenipotentiaries were General La Fayette, M. 
Le Forest (a veteran in diplomacy, and the friend of 
M. Talleyrand), General Sebastiani, M. D'Argenson (a 
descendant of one of the most illustrious families of 
France, and who as administrator had resisted Bona- 
parte's unjust measures at Antwerp), — these four were 
members of the Assembly of Deputies, — M. Pontecou- 
lant (member of the Chamber of Peers of the king, and 
also of the imperial chamber, where he had resisted with 
great energy the proposal of a regency, and refused 
Lucien the title of French citizen), and M. Benjamin 
Constant. 

The plenipotentiaries repaired first to the French 
advanced posts to ask of the Duke of Wellington and 

17 



258 APPENDIX. 

General Blucher a suspension of hostilities. Blucher, 
who was the nearest, charged himself with the answer. 
He demanded not only that the fortified posts, before 
and around him, should be given up, but that all those 
of the Ardennes and in Lorraine should be evacuated. 
The plenipotentiaries could not accept these conditions ; 
they wrote to Paris to send other commissaries to the 
two generals, and, furnished with a passport from Gen- 
eral Blucher, they reached, athwart many difficulties 
and delays, the headquarters of the allied sovereigns at 
Haguenau. The monarchs, and even their first min- 
isters, were not visible ; but Lord Stewart, the English 
ambassador. Count Capo d'Istria for Eussia, Count 
Walmoden for Austria, General Konesbeck for Prussia, 
held conferences with them. The vague observations 
and reciprocal accusations which passed on political 
events are matters of no importance ; whatever might 
have been the instructions of the French, it appears that 
their conduct was conformable to the interest which 
they had to leave no pretext to the allies to continue 
their march. In the conference. General Sebastiani 
declared that the only object of the war existed no 
longer ; that Bonaparte, now become a private individual 
under the care of the government, desired only a pass- 
port to go to the United States or to England ; that M. 
Otto was gone to London to ask this permission ; that 
the brothers of Bonaparte were not of the government ; 
that the name of young Napoleon, detained at Vienna, 
was so much the less obnoxious to the allies that a 
provisionary government had been named altogether 



APPENDIX. 259 

opposed to an imperial regency ; that nothing prevented 
an immediate suspension of arms, or conference for a 
peace ; that nothing had been prejudged respecting 
affairs or persons ; that these questions had not been 
entered on ; that they had come to consult the allies ; 
that the plenipotentiaries had extensive powers ; and 
that if the allies proposed any measures that might 
surpass them, they would immediately refer to the 
government. Sebastiani's colleagues adhered to his 
declaration. 

The conduct of the allies seemed to prove that they 
had a contrary interest, — that of availing themselves 
of the victory of Waterloo by taking possession of Paris 
without delay. They declared that the allied powers 
had mutually engaged not to negociate separately either 
for a peace or a truce ; and that the negociation could 
not commence at Haguenau, but must be delayed till all 
the cabinets should meet, which would take place as 
soon as possible. The plenipotentiaries were treated 
with great respect, but were accompanied by two Prus- 
sian officers ; and the road they were obliged to take 
was so prolonged that they did not reach Paris till the 
5th July, two days after the capitulation was signed. 
I have been assured by generals, that, if MM. de la 
Fayette and Sebastiani had reached Paris in time to be 
present at the councils of war on the 2d, it is possible 
that an attack on the Prussian army, which had crossed 
the Seine, would have taken place on the 3d. 

French commissaries — M. Flausergues, General An- 
dreossy, and some others — were sent to the Duke of 



260 APPENDIX. 

Wellington. It appears that the duke at his head- 
quarters proposed the re-establishment of Louis XYIII. 
only as an advice ; he added, however, that in case 
another choice was made the allies would feel them- 
selves obliged, for their own safety, to make some en- 
croachments on the territory and keep some strong 
places on their own account. The allies expressed 
strongly the wish that Bonaparte should be given up to 
them. It is said that on this occasion M. de la Fayette 
made the following answer to one of the foreign min- 
isters : *' I am astonished that when you make such a 
demand of the French people, you address yourself, in 
preference, to a prisoner of Olmutz." 



No. II. 
Declaration of the Chamber of Representatives. 

The troops of the allied powers are about to take 
possession of the capital. The Chamber of Represen- 
tatives will not the less continue to hold its sittings 
amidst the inhabitants of Paris, where the express will 
of the people has convoked its mandataries. 

But in these weighty circumstances the Chamber of 
Representatives owes to itself, to France, to Europe, a 
declaration of its sentiments and its principles. 

The Chamber therefore declares that it makes a sol- 
emn appeal to the fidelity and patriotism of the national 
guard of Paris, charged with the protection of the na- 



APPENDIX. 261 

tional representatives. It declares that it relies, with 
the highest confidence, on the principles of morality, 
honour, and magnanimity of the allied powers, and on 
their respect for the independence of the nation so 
positively expressed in their manifestoes. 

It declares that the government of France, whoever 
may be the chief, ought to unite the votes of the nation, 
legally emitted, and so co-operate with other govern- 
ments as to become a tie and guarantee of peace between 
France and Europe. 

It declares that a monarch can offer no real securi- 
ties, if he do not swear to observe a constitution framed 
by the national representation and accepted by the 
people. Thus every government which should have no 
other titles than acclamations and the will of a party, 
or which should be established by force, — any govern- 
ment which would not adopt the national colours, and 
would not guarantee 

The liberty of citizens ; 

The equality of civil and political rights ; 

The liberty of the press ; 
. The liberty of worship ; 

The representative system ; 

The free consent of levies of men and taxes ; 

The responsibility of the ministers ; 

The irrevocability of the sales of national property of 
every kind ; 

The inviolability of property ; 

The abolition of tithes, of nobility old and new, heredi- 
tary and feudal ; 



262 APPENDIX. 

The abolition of all confiscation of property ; 

The full oblivion of the opinions and political votes 
emitted to the present times ; 

The institution of the Legion of Honour ; ~ 

The rewards due to the officers and soldiers ; 

The bounties due to their widows ; 

The institution of juries ; 

The permanence of judges ; 

The payment of the public debt — 
would have but an ephemeral existence, and would 
secure neither the tranquillity of France nor that of 
Europe. 

That if the principles enumerated in the declaration 
should be either unacknowledged or violated, the repre- 
sentatives of the French people, now discharging a sacred 
duty, protest, in the face of the whole world, against 
violence and usurpation. They confide the maintenance 
of the dispositions which they proclaim to all good 
Frenchmen, to all generous hearts, to all enlightened 
minds, to all men jealous of their liberty, and, finally, 
to future generations ! 

Signed hy the President and Secretaries, 



INDEX. 



INDEX. 



Aboville, M. d', 21, 22. 

Africa, 126, 135. 

Aix la Chapelle, 223. 

Alexander the Great, Napoleon 
compares himself to, 87 ; and 
the Egyptian Jupiter, 189 ; and 
modern weapons of war, 201 ; 
conqueror of Thrace, lUyria, 
etc., 203. 

Alexander I. of Russia, orders 
guard of honour for Kosciusko, 
103; Napoleon seeks his alli- 
ance, 203 ; moderation in 
Erance, 216 and 223 ; and 
Louvre paintings, 227 ; and 
Byzantine dominions, 233-234 ; 
purchases collection of Mal- 
maison, 244 ; generous charac- 
ter, 253. 

Algiers, bombardment of, 162. 

Alsatia and Lorraine, 252. 

Ambrosian library at Milan, 240. 

Amiens, peace of, 194. 

Andreossy, General, 259. 

Angouleme, Due d', 66. 

Angouleme, Duchesse d', 66-69. 

Ann, Miss, see Parsons, Nancy. 

Antwerp, 257. 

"Apollo, The," 246. 

Ardennes, 258. 

x\rgenson, M. R. V. de, 257. 

Artois, Comte d', 34, 182. 

Athens, 244. 

Athens, King of, 110. 

Austerlitz, Field of, 125, 169. 



Austria, Napoleon's false claim of 
allegiance with, 40-42 ; false 
rumours in Paris, 145, 258. 

Austrians, The, defeat Murat, 
95-98 ; considerations for the 
peasants' propertj', 216-217 ; 
robbery of the Louvre, 221 and 
228-240. 

Autun, 29. 

Auvergne, 16. 

Avesnes, 124. 

Baden, Margrave of, 240. 

Badois, The, 212. 

Barlow, Joel, 192-193. 

Barrere, 143. 

Bavarians, The, 212. 

Bayes, 106. 

" Beggar Girl, The," 204. 

Belgians, The, 124 ; robbery of 
Louvre, 228-229. 

" Bellerophon, The," 139. 

Belleville, 157. 

Belvidera, 146. 

" Belvidere Apollo, The," 221. 

Berlin, 201 ; conqueror of, 210, 
223 ; cabinet of, 253. 

Berri, Due de, 182. ' 

Blacas, M., 221-222. 

Bliicher, General, false rumour of 
his defeat, 123 ; vengeance on 
the French, 211-212; despoils 
the Paris Museum, 222; de- 
mands evacuation of forts by 
French, 258. 



266 



INDEX. 



Bois de Boulogne, 216. 

Bordeaux, 66-68. 

Borghese, Prince, 243. 

Borysthenes, 169. 

Boufflers, Chevalier de, 3, 205. 

Boulevard de Gand, 163. 

Boulevard de I'lle d'Elba, 163. 

Bow Bridge, 176. 

Brittany, 69. 

Brussels, 123. 

Buda, 69. 

Bulow, General, 213. 

Buonaparte, Jerome, 110. 

Buonaparte, Joseph, 110, 133. 

Buonaparte, Lucien, at Champ 
de Mars, 110 ; advises dictator- 
ship, 130-135; refused citizen- 
ship, 257. 

Burgundy, 252. 

Burleigh, Lord, 189. 

Butte of Chaumont, 157. 

Byzantine Dominions, 233. 

C^SAR, Augustus, 94. 

Csesar, Julius, 87, 126. 

Cairo, 90. 

Calvin, 88. 

Cambaceres, Archi-chancelier, 
135. 

Cambray, garrison of, 21 ; procla- 
mation issued at, 176; town- 
clock of Troyes, 241. 

Cannes, 9. 

Canova, Antonio, favors pillage 
of the Louvre, 225 ; his statues, 
244; ambassador of the Pope, 
247. 

Capo d'Istria, Count, 258. 

Caravaggio, 244. 

Carlton House, 247. 

Carnot, L. N. M., exaggerates nu- 
merical force of army, 116-119 ; 
minister for home affairs, 141- 
142 ; regicide pamphlet, 149, 

Carracci, Lodovico, 244. 

Cassel,^244. j 



Castlereagh, Lord, 225-227. 
Catherine de Medicis, 170. 
Catholic Church, Napoleon's op- 
position to, 88-94 ; and James 
II. of Belgium, 223-225. 
Cato, Marcus Porcius, 151. 

Caulincourt, A. A. L. de, 142. 

Chailliot, 166. 

Chamber of Deputies, declare 
Napoleon a rebel, 11-12 ; Napo- 
leon dissolves, 17. 

Chamber of Peers, declare Napo- 
leon a rebel, 11-12; dissolved 
by Napoleon, 17 ; abdication of 
Napoleon, 140-141 ; and decision 
of the allies, 179, 257. 

Chamber of Representatives, 
Declaration of, 260-262. 

Chamfort, 47. 

Champagne, 243, 

Champs-Ely sees. Napoleon in- 
trenched in, 75-77 and 140; 
allies at, 170 ; allied camps in, 
174. 

Champ de Mars, 108-111, 144. 

Charente River, 186. 

Charenton, 176. 

Charles II, of England, 251. 

Charles VI. of France, 241. 

Charles XII., 87. 

Chaumont, Alliance of, 253. 

Cimerian Bosphorus, 151. 

Clarkson, Thomas, 199. 

Claude Lorrain, 243-244. 

Clermont, 16. 

Clichy, 168, 181. 

Coblentz Boulevard, 163. 

Cologne, 223. 

Committees of Beneficence, 59. 

Commodus, 142-143. 

Comnene, house of, 234. 

Confederates of the Rhine, 124. 

Conscript, the, 45, 93-94. 

" Conscript Fathers, the," 142. 

Constant, Benjamin, 136, 257. 

Corinth, 244, 



INDEX. 



267 



Corneille, Pierre, 197, 198. 

Corps Francs, 99-101. 

Corregio, A. A. da, 221, 223. 

Cossacks, Russian, so-called, 100- 
101 ; caricature on Napoleon, 
174. 

Council of State, profession of 
faith, 51-57 ; Napoleon's indif- 
ference to, 61-62 ; and the free 
constitution, 70-78, 88 ; proclaim 
Napoleon emperor, 105. 

Covent-Garden, 47. 

Crebellon, P. J. de, 197. 

" Critic, The," 189. 

Cyrenius, 94. 

Cyrus, 89. 

" Dame de la Violette," 47-48. 
David, J. L., 226. 
Davout, L. N., 160. 
Denon, Baron, 222; 226. 
Dening-Court, Castle of, 204. 
Denouettes, Gen. Lefebre, 21. 
" Diana from Versailles, The," 

243. 
Ducis, J. F., 195-196. 

Egypt, 90, 201. 

Elba, pamphlets sent to, 17; Na- 
poleon's followers in, 20 ; escape 
from, 40; iron mines at, 62; 
treaty with Napoleon after re- 
treat to, 71 ; fireworks repre- 
senting, 112-113; 133. 

Elbean Band, the, 14. 

Elgin, Lord, 243. 

Elizabeth, Queen of England, 69. 

Elysee-Bourbon Palace, Napoleon 
in full power at, 77; constitu- 
tional act issued from, 82 ; Na- 
poleon's retirement at, 119 ; dis- 
cussion of dictatorship at, 132- 
133; deputies demand Napole- 
on's abdication at, 136. 

England, opposed to Napoleon's 



return, 40 ; Napoleon's projected 

invasion of, 94, 258. 
English troops, 146-147 ; army, 

165; camp, 184,217. 
Esmenard, M., 198. 
Eylau, battle of, 128. 

Fauxbourg St. Antoine, Rusky 
Musky and his followers, 100- 
101 ; anecdote of, 128-129 ; dur- 
ing siege of Paris, 159 ; views 
of liberty, 207. 

Fauxbourg St. Marceau, 159. 

Field of May, its pretentions, 56 ; 
publicly announced, 64; duplic- 
ity of Napoleon, 76-80; account 
of the proceedings, etc., 105- 
114. 

Flausergues, M., 259. 

Fleurus, 122. 

Fontainebleau, army collected 
near, 28 ; Napoleon's entry into, 
31 ; Polisli depredations near, 
101, 151. 

Fouche', Joseph, Due d'Otranto, 
presses for Napoleon's abdica- 
tion, 136 ; made minister of po- 
lice, 141 ; letter to Wellington 
on freedom, 206. 

Fox, Charles James, 133. 

Frances I. of Raphael, 242. 

Freemasons, 47. 

Friedland, field of, 125. 

Ganges River, 201. 

" Ganymede of Sans Souci," 220. 

Garden of plants, 247-248. 

Genoa, treaty of, 245. 

German, princes, 41 ; hatred of 

French, 252-253. 
Germany, 64, 155. 
Ghent, 49, 69. 
Giraudet, M., 226. 
Giulio Romano, 246. 
Giustiniani, Prince, 243. 
'' Gladiator, the," 223, 243. 



268 



INDEX. 



Gorani, M., 5. 

Goths and Vandals, 220. 

Graudenz fortress, 222. 

Greece, heroes of, 88, 203. 

Grenelle, plain of, 165-166. 

Grenier, General, 142. 

Grenoble, treachery of garrison 

of, 13-14, 20-22, 141. 
Guidos, 244. 

Haguenan, 178, 258-259. 
Hamilton, Sir William, 226. 
Hamlet, 249. 
Hannibal, 151. 
Hanoverians, the, 124. 
Hapsburg, house of, 284. 
Heidelberg library, 240. 
Helvetic Republic, the, 191. 
Henry IV. of France, 161. 
Henry VIII. of England, 90. 
" Holy family, the," 242. 
Homer, 6. 
Horace, 241. 
"Horses of Corinth, the," 228- 

234. 
Hotel of the Invalids, the, 234. 
Hume, David, 242. 
Hyde Park Corner, 176. 

Illtria, 203. 

Imperial Guard, the, 118. 

India, 200-201. 

Issy, 165. 

Italy, 9 ; army of King of Naples 

in, 95-98, 190, 238; sculptures 

in, 243. 
Italian Boulevard, the, 162-163. 

Jacobins, the, repressed, 7 ; their 
maxim " daring," 26-27 ; hatred 
of Napoleon, 82, 130 ; the cry 
of liberty, 175, 250 ; " Jacobins 
blancs," 251. 

Janizaries, the, 32. 

Jena, bridge, 165 and 211, 169 ; 
conqueror of, 210. 



Joachim, King of Naples, 9. 

Joseph II. of Belgium, 223. 

Juan, bay of, 8. 

Junius, 93. 

Junot, Marshal, 284. 

Junot, Madame, 241. 

Kensington, 176. 
Konesbeck, General, 258. 
Koran, the, 90. 
Kosciusko, 102-104. 

La Bedoyj^re, General, 13, 141. 

La Bedoyere, Madame, 13. 

La Chapelle, 176. 

La Fayette, General, oath of fed- 
eration, 2 ; address to house of 
Representatives, 130-138 ; de- 
puty to allied powers, 178, 257 ; 
and the allies, 259-260. 

La Fere, C. de, 21-22. 

La Gaiete Theatre, 162. 

La Harpe, M. de, 108. 

Lallemand, General, 21. 

Lameth, M., 141. 

Lanjuinais, Comte de, 114-115, 
138, 181. 

Lasune's House, 217. 

La Vendee, 69. 

La Villette, 160. 

Lebrun, Charles, 248. 

Le Forest, M., 257. 

Legion of Honour, 45, 149, 196. 

Leoben, 132. 

Le Seurs, 242. 

Lily, the, emblem of the Bour- 
bons, 35, 47, 181. 

Lisle, 20. 

Lisle, Count of, see Louis XVIII. 

Loire River, 168. 

London, 242, 253. 

Longuevilie, Madame de, 229. 

Lons le Saulnier, 28-29. 

Lorraine, 258. 

Louis XIV., 252. 



INDEX. 



269 



Louis XVIII., flees from the 
Capital, 34 ; military establish- 
ment, 38 ; and the Free Press, 
58 ; proclamation from Ghent, 
69, 71; toleration, 92, 106; 
constitutional chart, 109, 163 ; 
proclamation, 176-177 ; sup- 
ported by the Allies, 178-180; 
enters Paris, 181-185; the rob- 
bery of the Louvre, 227-228 ; 
nominates Fouche, 250, 260. 

Louvre gallery, pillage of, 220- 
237. 

Luther, Martin, 88. 

Luxembourg, 179. 

Luxembourg gallery, 242. 

Lyons, captured by Napoleon, 
"12-29, 107. 

Macdonald, Marshal, 15. 

Machiavel, 86. 

Macon, 29. 

" Madonna della Seggia," 238. 

Mahomet, 87-90. 

Mahometan Wechabites, 90. 

Malmaison, 150-152, 155, 244. 

Mameluke, 15L 

Marchand, General, 13-15. 

Marengo, field of, 125 ; heroes of, 

169. 
Maria Theresa, 69. 
Marie Louise, 41-42. 
Marius, Caius, 143. 
Marne, 100. 
Maron, M., 91-92. 
Marseilles, 66. 

Massena, Due de Rivoli, 141. 
Matilda's tapestry, 241-242. 
Mazarin, Jules, 174. 
Meaux, 100. 
Melun, 28. 
Meudon, 160, 165. 
Michel Angelo, 243-244 
Miguards, 242. 
Milan, 229. 
Mile-End, 176. 



Mirabeau, Comte de, 180. 

Mithridates, 153. 

Modena, 229. 

Montagu, Mrs., 148. 

Montargis, 28. 

Montauban College, 46. 

Montmartre, 157, 168. 

Mortier, Marshal, 20-22. 

Moscow, 129, 174, 216. 

Moses, 87. 

Moskwa, Prince of, see Ney. 

Munich, 201. 

Murat, King of Naples, 9; van- 
quished by Austrians, 95-98 ; 
failure, 105. 

Murat, Madame, 217. 



Namur, 123. 

Nancy, 117. 

Naples, King of, see Murat. 

Naples, Queen of, see Murat. 

Napoleon Bonaparte, " nightmare 
of the world," 3; author's admi- 
ration for, 5-6 ; first consul, 7 ; 
lands at Cannes, 9; professed 
interest in the people, 10 ; de- 
clared a traitor, 11 ; march to 
Grenoble and Lyons, 12-16 ; 
issues imperial decrees and as- 
sumes emperorship, 16 ; his 
crimes and artifices, 17-22; dis- 
aff'ection of the military in his 
favour, 23-26 ; buys the Jaco- 
bins, 26-27 ; joined by Ney, 29 ; 
enters Fontainebleau, 31 ; ar- 
rival at Paris, 36-37 ; address 
to soldiers, 39 ; impostures and 
twenty years' truce, 40-43 ; 
hated by the women, 44-49; 
action of Council of State, 50- 
57 ; his false pretentions, 61-62 ; 
dissatisfaction, 63-64; harangue 
to the troops, 70-71 ; treaty 
with Bourbons violated, 71, 72; 
retires to the Palais-Bourbon, 



270 



INDEX. 



75-77 ; publishes the " Addi- 
tional Act to the Constitution/' 
78-79 ; limits power of the Field 
of May, 79-85; selfishness, 86; 
desire for fame, 87 ; opposes the 
Catholic Church, 88-94 ; his 
military church, 91 ; and Kos- 
ciusko, 101-104; at Field of 
May, 105-114 ; and armies of 
Europe, 114-115; opinion on 
Wellington, 116 ; exaggeration 
of his army, 117 ; preparation 
to meet English, 120-122 ; cow- 
ardice and calumny, 123-124 ; 
Waterloo, 125-127; belief in 
his star, 128 ; his account of his 
defeat, 129 ; as dictator, 129- 
130 ; La Fayette spoils his 
plans, 132-133 ; message to 
House of Representatives, 133- 
134; abdicates, 186-138; still 
clings to dictatorship, 139 ; still 
surrounded by his soldiers, 140, 
141, 142; withdraws to Mal- 
maison, 150 ; preparation to 
leave France, 151-152; on ob- 
stetrics, 158, 154 ; farewell letter 
to his army, 155-156 ; " L'Em 
pereur de la Canaille," 159-160 
163, 167; extolled by English 
172-173; caricatures, 174; sur 
renders to English, 186-187 
"his destin," 188-189; phren- 
ology, 190; and the U. S., 191- 
193; the London papers, 193- 
194 ; the author, 194-195 ; and 
men of letters, 195; objections 
to the poets and stage, 196-198; 
abolition of slavery, 199-200; 
projected attack on India, 200- 
203 ; his great work on Egypt, 
201 ; removal of statue of, 210 ; 
the Louvre Gallery and Paris 
Museum, 233-244, 257, 258, 
260. 
Napoleon II., 40; nominated by 



Napoleon Bonaparte, 137-142, 
154, 175 ; and the allies, 258. 

National Assembly, the, 52. 

National Guard, the, loyalty to 
Louis XVIIL, 34 ; maintain or- 
der in Paris, 36 ; usefulness of, 
145; good feeling towards allies, 
170 ; preserve order, 177-178 ; 
assist foreign troops, 232; and 
declaration of Chamber of Re- 
presentatives, 260. 

National library, 240. 

Nesselrode, M. de, 227. 

Neuilly, 158, 168, 217, 219. 

Ney, Marshal, 28-31, 140-141. 

Nimes, 250. 

Olmutz, 132, 260. 
Orange, Prince of, 248. 
Order of St. Louis, 17. 
Order of St. Michael, 17. 
Orleans, Duke of, 15. 
Ossian, 6, 219. 
Otto, M., 258. 
Otranto, Duke of, see Fouche. 

Palais-Bourbon, the, 75. 

" Pallas de Veletri, the," 243. 

Paris, Cardinal Archbishop of, 92. 

Paris Bankers, 45. 

Paris Museum, 221-247. 

Parma, 229. 

Parma, Prince of, 227. 

Parsons, Nancy, 93. 

Philippi, plains of, 151. 

Picardy, 21. 

" Pie Voleuse," see " Thievish 

Magpie." 
Piedmont, 9, 243. 
Pitt, William, 186. 
Pius VII., crowned Napoleon, 8 ; 

opposed by Napoleon, 88-94 ; 

and Murat, 96 ; Canova, 226. 
Place of the Carrousel, 283, 235. 
Place Vendome, 210. 
Poles, the, 101-104. 



INDEX. 



271 



Pompey, 126, 151. 

Pontecoulant, M., 257. 

Pontus, 151. 

Porte St. Martin Theatre, 148, 
162. 

Porto Ferrajo, 38. 

Potzdam, 223. 

Poussin, M., 242. 

Pretorian band, 32. 

Provence, Napoleon lands in, 9 
and 20 ; Napoleon's march from, 
32; fireworks of Napoleon's 
landing in, 113. 

Provisionary Government, the, 
221-222. 

Prussia, King of, restrains Blii- 
cher, 211; ransacks the Louvre, 
223 ; purchases Giustiniani col- 
lection, 244. 

Prussia, 41, 258. 

Prussians, the, 10; at Waterloo, 
123-125 ; besieging Paris, 164- 
165 ; camp, 184 ; retaliation on 
the French, 210-216; despoil 
the Louvre Gallery, 220-223, 
259. 

QuATREMERE de Quincy, 226. 
Quinette, M., 142. 

Racine, J. B., 197, 229. 

Raphael, Sanzio, paintings of, 238, 
242, 246. 

Rhine River, 223. 

Rhine boundary, 9-12. 

Robespierre, 26. 

Rochefort, 154, 186. 

Romano, Julio, see Giulio Ro- 
mano. 

Rojnans, the, 189. 

Rome, Murat in, 9 ; heroes of, 88 ; 
ancient, 90; arts in, 226 and 
237, 240; art comparison with 
Paris, 246-247. 

Rubens, Peter Paul, 242. 

Rusky Musky, 100-101. 



Russia, Emperor of, see Alex- 
ander. 

Russia, cause of Napoleon's fail- 
ure in, 51 and 128; deserts of, 
135 ; representative of, 258. 

Russians, the, unable to oppose 
Napoleon, 40 ; in Paris, 203 and 
216. 

St. Cloud, 176, 220-221. 

St. Denis, gates of, 35 ; plain of, 

158-162; village, 168, 177; 

steeples, 181. 
St. Germain, 158, 160. 
" St. Jerom of Corregio," 229. 
St. Martin, gates of, 35, 148. 
" St. Michael, the," 242. 
St. Ouen, 168. 
St. Peter's, 246. 
St. Petersburg, 253. 
Sardinia, King of, 239, 243. 
Saxons, 124. 
Saxony, 129. 
Schoenbrunn, 42. 
Scipio Africanus, Minor, 126. 
Scotland, 204. 
Sebastian!, Comte F. H. B. de, 

257-259. 
Seine River, 28, 217, 259. 
Shakespeare, William, 4. 
Slave Trade, the, 199-200. 
Soignies, forest of, 126. 
Spain, 126. 
Spaniards, 239. 
Stael, Madame de, 4. 
Stadtholder collection, the, 248. 
Stage, the, 195-197. 
Stewart, Lord, 258. 

Tacitus, 87. 

Talleyrand, Prince, 227, 257. 

Tauenzien, General, 213. 

Thebes, ruins of, 203. 

" Thievish Magpie," 148, 162. 

Thirty- Years' War, 240. 

Thrace, 203. 



272 



INDEX. 



Tiberius, 87. 

Tilbury fort, 69. 

Tilly, General, 240. 

Titian, 246. 

Tolentino, peace of, 226-227, 238, 
240. 

Tolstoi, M. de, 233. 

Tortoni's, 174. 

Toulon, 20. 

Toulouse, 66. 

Tournus, 29. 

" Transfiguration, the," 238, 246. 

Treviso, Duke of, see Mortier. 

Troyes, 101, town-clock of, 241- 
242. 

Tuileries, the, Ney at, 28 ; Napo- 
leon at, 31 ; Louis XVIII. quits, 
34; Napoleon's speech to sol- 
diers at, 40; divan of, 41; Na- 
poleon's arrival at, 51 ; the 
" canaille " at, 63 ; review at, 
70 ; council chamber, 73-78, 94 ; 
hired acclamations, 118-119 ; 
great council at, 135 ; possessed 
by the allies, 179; gardens of, 
184 ; conference at, 191 ; events 
at, 202 ; foreign troops at, 216 ; 
ransacked, 228-240. 

Tuscany, Duke of, 238. 

United States, expected escape 
of Napoleon to, 138 ; Napoleon's 
hatred of, 191-192 ; passport to, 
258. 

Utica, 151. 

Valence, 66. 

Var, department of the, 11, 14. 

Vatican, the, 240, 243. 

Vaugirard, 176. 

Venice, spoils from the Louvre, 

229-234 ; MSS. from, 240 ; treaty 

of, 245. 
" Venus de Medicis, the," 238. 
Venvres, 165. 



Verdun, 117. 

Vernet, 242. 

Versailles, 160, 180. 

Vertu, 147. 

Vienna, declaration at, 71 ; oracle 
at, 110; on route to India, 201 ; 
Congress of, 253-254 ; Napo- 
leon II. detained at, 258. 

Ville Juif, 176. 

Vinci, Leonardo da, 243. 

Violets, emblem of the Bourbons, 
37, 47. 

Vistula River, 40. 

Vizille, 13. 

Wagram, field of, 125, 169, 206. 

Walmoden, Count, 258. 

Waterloo, battle of, 125-129 ; men- 
tioned, 136, 149, 179, 259. 

Wellington, Duke of. Napoleon's 
opinion of, 115-116; false ru- 
mour of his defeat, 123 ; Napole- 
on's generals' opinions of, 127- 
128 ; his mercy to the con- 
quered, 146-148; allegiance of 
Parisians to, 154 ; attack on 
Paris, 156-167; letter from 
Otranto to, 206 ; action at pil- 
lage of Louvre, 222-242 ; pleni- 
potentiaries to, 257 ; proposes re- 
establishment of Louis XVIII. 
260. 

Wilberforce, William, 199. 

William I. of England, 242. 

Williams, H. M., verses on the 
peace of Amiens, 194-195. 

Wilna, 193. 

Wirtemberghers, the, 212. 

Women, hatred of Napoleon, 44- 
49 ; interference of, 159. 

Xaviek, Louis Stanislas, 54. 

Zeitiien, General, 213. 
Zoroaster, 87 



